


we thought we knew (we know nothing)

by xeah



Series: remember me (for who we were) [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Gay Keith (Voltron), Homesick Lance (Voltron), Hurt Lance (Voltron), Implied/Referenced Torture, Insecure Lance (Voltron), Lance (Voltron) Angst, Lance (Voltron) is a Mess, Lance has a twin, M/M, Magical Realism, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining Keith (Voltron), Protective Keith (Voltron), Slow Burn, Space Dad Shiro (Voltron), Swearing, Witch Lance (Voltron), Witches, art is so welcome, if you read the first fic LIKE YOU SHOULD HAVE then you already know this it's not a spoiler anymore, scary tags sound scary
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-08 01:35:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 173,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13447734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xeah/pseuds/xeah
Summary: Lance is glad he doesn’t have to hide the fact that he can lift Shiro off the ground without physically touching him, or that he can make snow flurries fly around the room to add some fun to their daily training sessions (and maybe make Keith slide on his ass halfway across the room). He’s glad that he can finally be himself in front of his team, his space family.That doesn’t mean he wants them to know about the other things. Or why he ran from those things. He’s in space, so far away from home. The team doesn’t need to know about something that’ll never affect them.Of course, things change when Lance is captured by the Galra. Things change when something from his past, a past he ran away from, shows up out of nowhere on the Castle and helps the team get him back before it’s too late, even though it already is.Things change when the murderous son-of-a-bitch responsible for the slaughter of his people, of his brother, follows him into space and finally has a lock on Lance –and this time, Lance has nowhere to run.This time, the Beast has its eyes on Lance, and he has nowhere to hide.





	1. and i'm afraid (i won't get out alive)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance sees something he'd really rather not have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I say I’d finish writing this before starting to post? Did I?
> 
> In my defense, at the time, I was totally planning to go through with that. But the feedback “nobody has to know (nobody but me)” received was overwhelming and completely caught me off-guard, and I ended up posting this before I was fully aware of wtf I was doing. You guys are beautiful, and I love you, and I thank you so, so much for all the wonderful comments and kudos you gave the fic. I just couldn’t help myself and wanted to get this out and see what you guys think of it. I hope this continuation does you justice, and that you enjoy it.
> 
> And don’t worry about that ugly-ass question mark next to the chapter number! I definitely plan on seeing this story through to the end. Last time I had such conviction to finish a story, I binge-wrote my way through 800k+ [1k pages. That is ONE THOUSAND PAGES on Word] words of an original story, which includes an entire folder that has several dozen research documents, hundreds of pictures, and very many CherryTree docx where I plan my stories out. Oh, yes, and five 200-paged notebooks that have too many sticky notes poking out at every page. I’m not saying this will be 800k words, but…it will be long. And I do plan on finishing this.
> 
> If you’re interested in that long-ass story I mentioned, check out my [Wattpad](https://www.wattpad.com/user/azurehyn) account!
> 
> I don’t have an update schedule, but it will take my roughly one to two weeks to churn chapters out. No promises, though. 
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> [p.s., this is a fic which you'll need to read Part 1 of to understand. I strongly advise it.]

Lance is having the absolute worst case of déjà vu on the _worst day possible._

He only notices what’s happening when he finds himself staring in confusion at Hunk as the resident cinnamon roll attempts to explain to Coran exactly _why_ his previous efforts to bake cookies have ended in dismal failure and possible erosion of the Paladins’ tongues.

(The burnt grass taste was only the beginning).

Pidge is absently nodding along to whatever Hunk’s saying as she tries to drown herself in the Altean equivalent of three gallons of coffee, because death by caffeine is always infinitely better than rejuvenation by the brewed Altean tea at a dozing Keith’s elbow. Lance prefers coffee himself, but he doesn’t quite understand Pidge’s intense hatred for tea. It’s akin to vampire’s hatred of garlic. It makes no sense.

Shiro’s talking in a quiet voice to Allura, seeming to be mildly concerned about something, and not really paying attention to Hunk and Coran. Allura probably spent the entire night trying to figure out how the Galra are wormholing close enough to the Castle’s various changing locations that it’s become a genuine concern. Shiro probably helped her come up and test out theories whilst simultaneously trying to get her to go to bed, despite also not planning to sleep anytime soon himself.

Keith’s staring blankly at his bowl of food goo, very obviously still asleep yet somehow awake enough to animate his physical body into mimicking conscious movement. It honestly must take an insane amount of skill to train so much, so often, and not actually get that much sleep, yet still maintain such good-looking skin. Your pores are not supposed to be that clear when you commit the great sin of using an all-in-one bar of soap on your skin.

(You never heard this from Lance, he’ll deny everything.)

Everyone’s just so exhausted from Allura’ purely hellish training last night that was interrupted by a Galra attack that went way past their Allura-ordered bedtime, that all they can do now is just pretend to be awake when really, they’re all still sleeping.

Except Coran, who doesn’t seem to sleep, ever.

And Hunk, who can awaken from the dead at the thought of allowing Coran anywhere near rudimentary cookies without proper supervision.

And Lance, grade A student at Insomnia and Sleep Deprivation 101, staring at Hunk because he swears to the gods, he has heard Hunk say everything he’s saying once before.

 _This isn’t happening,_ Lance groans internally as he runs his fingers through hair that needs a cut, hair that’s getting a little shaggy, hair that’s curling a little at the ends, reminding him too much of Allie’s wild mane. He shuts his eyes on the sight of his gloopy food goo, listening to what Hunk’s saying.

_You’re not supposed to use the scaultrite crystals, in any form whatsoever, to bake cookies._

“You’re not supposed to use the scaultrite crystals, in any form whatsoever, to bake cookies.” Hunk says. “Scaultrite crystals and cookies? No. Just no. A flat-out _no._ Kindly walk yourself out of my kitchen for even thinking to attempt trying it again.”

_My kitchen._

“My kitchen,” Pidge giggles, a little drunkenly.

_Not even when they’ve been broken down to a powderized form?_

“Not even when they’ve been broken down to a powderized form?” Coran wonders, one arm crossed over his chest while the other hand plays with the curling end of his vibrant orange moustache, eyeing the ingredients Hunk’s set out thoughtfully. He gets points for trying, at least.

_Not even._

Hunk shakes his head. “Not even. Absolutely not.”

Pidge, having downed just enough pseudo-coffee to function semi-normally, will grumble, _Those crystals are to power the teleduv, so please, Coran, for the survival of everyone present, don’t use the scaultrite crystals like that again._

“Those crystals are to power the teleduv, so please, Coran, for the survival of everyone here, don’t use the scaultrite crystals like that again.” She manages to get out just before she gulps another mouthful of steaming coffee. She smacks her lips before wrinkling her nose. “I can still taste my tongue burning off.”

Hunk points a finger at her. _What she_ – “–said. Less exaggeration, but yeah, basically.”

Lance groans –and feels himself _knowing_ that he’s done that before, under these exact circumstances, for these exact reasons –as he pushes his food go away with a mental shove (that has happened enough in the past week that no one really questions it anymore. Shiro did chastise him for twirling Keith’s spoon so much so that the red boy couldn’t even eat his goo for a solid five minutes, though) and crosses his arms on the table before dropping his head in them, effectively shutting off the rest of the world from his sight.

But not his hearing.

Because the move has caught Pidge’s attention, and now she’s about to ask –

“Why do you look like you’re dealing with a B.M. moment right now?”

And he knows Hunk will ask, “B.M. moment?”

“Bowl movement.”

“Pidge,” Lance groans. “Why are you quoting Supernatural.”

He doesn’t see it, but he knows she’s shrugging nonchalantly right now. “It seemed appropriate considering the constipated look on your face.”

Lance doesn’t lift his head as he lets out a noncommittal grunt in response, choosing to pretend that by hiding like this, everyone will just ignore him. And for a while, everyone does, either too tired from last night’s battle or already talking with someone else.

Left to himself for the moment, Lance quickly checks that all the locks are on in his mind, keeping the voices shut away, just enough that all he gets is vague whispers and feelings rather than the full-frontal blows when they’re released.

All the locks are working as they should, Blue assuring him of that as she does her own mental sweep of them. Lance’s frown is hidden by the material of his jacket as he bites his lip and absently rubs the insides of his wrists against where they touch his elbows thanks to his current position. If the voices are where they should be, then why the hell is this happening?

The voices are usually just that. Voices, indiscernible from one another. They’re violent and perpetually angry, but Lance always manages to keep control over them (somewhat). But the voices come from somewhere. Lance wasn’t born with them screaming murder and rage at every chance they managed to wiggle out behind the door he repeatedly tries to shut them behind every waking moment. He used to be normal.

The voices come from somewhere. They have their own homes. They are individuals warring for dominance in his mind, over him.

Logically, Lance knows why this is happening. Logically, he knows this is happening because one of the voices has been through this, and its memory of this day is merging with Lance’s in-the-moment experience of it. Logically, he knows this is why he feels like he’s living through this day for the second time, when he knows he has not, in fact, ever lived this day.

Logically, he knows all this. It’s only happened to him once before, back home, but that once was enough to tell him what was happening, why it was happening, and that there was nothing he could do but live it out, never knowing when the voice’s memory would diverge from his reality because he’s done something different that the voice didn’t.

But he simply can’t understand _how_ the hell this is happening when he’s in _space,_ when he’s fighting an intergalactic war against a 10,000-year-old purple dude who doesn’t know what the hell ‘chill’ means. How could one of the voices have ended up in space, just like him, fighting this war, just like him, surrounded by people he can call family, just like him?

_How the hell is this happening?_

“Lance?”

Lance snaps out of his brooding reverie in time to lift his head and find that everyone at the table is watching him closely. He blinks at them several times before asking, “What? Is there something on my nose? I swear I washed off my face mask before getting here.”

Keith and Pidge do a –quite frankly terrifying –twin rendition of rolling their eyes at the exact same moment. Shiro cracks a smile while Allura shakes her head ruefully at that before returning to scrolling through her tablet.

Coran nudges Pidge and tells her that face masks are actually fabulous for skincare, especially the Altean ones he’s been getting for Lance, while Keith comments that he’d rather not have weird alien mud masks stuck on his face for extended periods of time. Lance smiles, victorious at momentarily deflecting them, until he looks at Hunk and –yeah, Hunk’s not being fooled.

Hunk nods pointedly at Lance’s untouched breakfast. “You haven’t eaten anything.”

Lance gives him a look with both eyebrows raised sky-high. He looks at the food goo, then back at Hunk. Even as he does so, he questions why he feels like he’s done this before, and why he can’t make himself react differently this time. “Can you blame a guy for not being hungry for…that?”

“Well, no, but,” Hunk frowns, concerned. “You didn’t eat dinner last night, either.”

“Hunk, no one did.”

They were all too busy fighting off the hundreds of Galra fighters that appeared out of seemingly nowhere, and then too dead tired to do anything that head to their rooms and collapse. Even Pidge, and she has the insane (translation; worrying) ability to pull three all-nighters in a row.

(He can only do that with the aid of magic and the voices screaming in his ear. How does Pidge do it???)

“Lance,” oh crap, Shiro’s tuned into their conversation, and looks seconds away from using his Dad Voice to pry answers out of Lance. “If this is about your magic, we should know.”

Lance flaps his hand a little too eagerly, as if he’s trying to physically wave away the thought. If only. “Nah, it’s cool. My magic’s healing up good, I’m almost at full capacity.”

If almost means sixty to seventy percent, then yes, he is almost there.

“You’d tell us if you weren’t, right?” Shiro presses, unconvinced. He’s pretty good at respecting privacy and boundaries, but not when he thinks it affects any of their health, physical or otherwise.

“Or if you need something to help?” Coran adds. “Human magic seems to share the same qualities as quintessence, so I’m sure I could find something to help, if need be.”

Lance nods, a little guilty at the inconvenience he’s proven to be when he’d collapsed after only two hours of the alliance-planning-meeting on Xyphelia last week. Then he’d spent most of the rest of their stay there alternating between the healing pod, enforced bed-rest in the med-bay, or chilling in his quarters at the tree-palace. You’d think he’d have been glad for the chance to enjoy and relax himself.

He hadn’t. He felt constantly sick, like someone had tied his intestines into knots and pushed needles in his stomach so that every time he ate or drank something, it hurt or burned. He’d only started to feel genuinely better three days ago.

“Totally, definitely!” he answers, putting on the biggest, brightest smile he can muster. “You don’t have to worry ’bout little old me. I’m good.”

Shiro fixes him with a stern look for a moment longer before nodding warily, turning his attention to Allura when she points at something on her screen with surprise on her face. Lance slumps in his seat, grateful to be out of the eagle-eye’s attention, only to promptly have thirty years startled off his life when Hunk claps him on the shoulder.

“Hunk!” he yelps, putting a hand over his thudding heart and ignoring Keith, Pidge, and Coran’s confused looks. “Don’t scare me like that, man!”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.” Hunk apologizes instantly, his brow wrinkled in a worried frown. He leans in, noticing how Lance doesn’t want anyone to worry about him, and says quietly, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Lance is warmed at the concern. “Dude, don’t worry. I’m fine, just…having a weird case of déjà vu.”

Hunk blinks in surprise as he straightens. “Déjà vu?”

Lance nods slowly, wondering if he should have just left it at ‘I’m fine’. Now’s not really the right time to drop the bomb labelled, _Hi, Lance McClain, potentially mentally compromised because of voices in my head, nice to meet ya._

He wonders if he’ll ever think it’s the right time to do that, or if he’ll end up being forced into revealing it like he had been about his powers, thanks to Lykonark.

“Déjà vu?” Pidge pipes up, sitting straight with her eyes big, because she’s got ears the size of an elephant. “Are you –”

“No, I am not clairvoyant.” Lance answers before she can even finish the question.

Pidge pouts, sitting back in her chair with her arms crossed like a huffy child. “Boo-hoo. Would’ve been fun.”

The amused smile on Lance’s face at her reaction fades at those words, a heaviness dragging his heart down to settle in his stomach shrivelling up. He knows Pidge doesn’t mean anything by it. He knows that if he were in her shoes, he’d think that being able to see the future would be cool, too.

(Really, who wouldn’t think that?)

(Him.)

The thing is, he does know better. He can’t see the future personally, but he knows Witches who can. He knows that so many clairvoyant Witches fall into depression, get hooked on the worst drugs, become alcoholics, do anything just to mute their foresight. Not everything about being a Witch is sunshine and daisies. In fact, most of it is dark and bloody. And includes things that stalk the nightmares of the worst monsters, have very sharp claws, and sharper teeth.

“What about psychic?” Pidge presses, unrelenting.

Lance looks up over his folded arms and narrows his eyes at her. “I feel like you are greatly overestimating my magical abilities.”

“Either that, or you are deliberately selling yourself short in some misguided attempt to look cool when you’re not.”

“I am cool!”

“Uh-huh,” she deadpans. “Keep telling yourself that.”

“Pidge, I know where your techie babies are.”

“Lance, I know where my headphones disappeared, and where all your face masks and beauty care shi-et is.”

“Plus, your eyes do go all Merlin on us.” Hunk points out, trying to steer the conversation back to safe waters in an effort to alleviate the building showdown.

Lance suppresses a groan. The number of times someone’s mentioned _Merlin_ is unbelievable, really. “That is a TV show.”

“Who’s Merlin?” Coran asks, looking absolutely flabbergasted. Trust Coran to show an interest in Merlin, of all things.

“Hold on,” Pidge cuts in. “Oh my god, was Merlin real? As-in-he-was-a-Witch-real?”

Before Lance can answer, Allura speaks up.

“Paladins,” says, delicately placing her tablet on the table and rising from her seat whilst still keeping her eyes glued on the screen. Her voice is so serious that Pidge stops poking a listless Keith in the arm in an attempt to rouse him from his semi-deceased state. “The Castle’s just been notified of a distress signal that’s been activated on a planet two vargas from our current location. Quickly finish up your breakfast and reconvene on the bridge.”

Lance isn’t even surprised anymore by the fact that he’s _not_ surprised by her words, because he knew they were coming. He’s long past the point of being surprised –now he’s dissolving into an anxious mess and trying desperately to keep it under wraps, because _like hell_ is he going to explain to the team that, _Yes, I’m freaking the fuck out because I know everything you’re about to say before you say it and no,_ no, _this is not a good thing_.

It wasn’t last time, it sure as hell won’t be this time.

With a final nod at Shiro, who smiles at her (okay, but seriously, _when_ will those two level-up from simple nods and innocent smiles and shy blushes to something more? Lance is losing his money to Pidge here, and there’s not much to begin with –there’s actually nothing), she sweeps out of the kitchen in all her royal glory. At least, as royally glorious as she can look with two space mice on her shoulders, one poking its head out of a pocket Lance did not know existed in her dress, and another sitting on top of the diadem Allura always wears on her head.

It says a lot that the sight of those mice no longer has so much as a confused blink come from any of the Paladins, by this point.

As the Paladins hurry through their assorted breakfasts (Coran rushing after Allura to prepare their brief mission outline before the Paladins get to the bridge), Lance finds himself falling back into that irritating habit he’s picked up since waking that morning; picking at his food goo and not actually eating it as he correctly guesses what’s going to happen next a few seconds before it does.

He knows Pidge is seconds away from flinging drops of her refilled, scalding hot coffee at Keith to snap him awake before she actually does it.

He knows Keith will retaliate by pouring enough of tea into her coffee when she’s not looking that she’ll gag when she takes a sip a second before he does it, a second before she does it.

(She really hates tea, and she definitely tases him, and now Lance knows to never walk on Pidge’s right, where she keeps her bayard strapped under her shirt for reasons he’s a little frightened to learn).

He knows Hunk will muse out loud about what culinary project he can immerse himself in as a treat for surviving last night’s battle and hopefully helping whoever sent out the distress signal today a second before he does. He knows Hunk will offer Lance to taste test whatever miracle he manages to throw together a second before he does. He knows he’ll accept Hunk’s offer without missing a beat a second before he does.

He knows he’ll keep doing this, going along with everything he knows is about to happen, until something happens that’s different to this strange, vague memory he’s certain must be a memory, even though he’s not quite as certain whose memory it is.

And he’s scared. He’s scared of what will be different, because the one time this happened back home, he hurt Allie, _bad,_ the voices getting so loud that he didn’t know what he was doing until Mami screaming snapped him awake, enough to realize that his hands were around Allie’s throat and she wasn’t breathing.

**_:you think she forgives you for that hah how pathetic you are how_ ** **wrong _do you really think she could ever forgive you for almost:_**

Blue growls, the reverberation of the sound rumbling down Lance’s spine and raising hairs on the back of his neck as goosebumps break out over his skin. He shudders inwardly at the low, dangerous tone of her warning, even as he uses the voice’s surprise to kick them back behind the mental door they snuck out of. Lance swallows thickly and he blinks several times to get the burning sensation of tears wanting to fall out of his eyes, and focuses on watching his steps as he and the other Paladins make their way to the bridge.

He tries to focus on what his team are talking about. He really does. He tries to focus on Keith and Shiro talking, on how Shiro’s warning Keith to stay with the team and not break away and run off on his own. He tries to focus on Hunk and Pidge talking about installing the cloaking device Pidge built for Green on the other Lions as well, starting with Red as an experiment since she’s the fastest Lion.

He knows that if he were really in tip-top shape he parades himself around to be, he’d retort to that and say Blue’s the fastest. Then Keith would scoff at that, and Lance would challenge him to a race, and Keith would give him that (racy) smirk of his and say, _You’re on, Frosty,_ using that stupid nickname he’d pinned the first time Lance accidentally (not) sent him spiralling down a trail of ice he made in the training room, just to get the upper hand.

(And he’d have gotten that upper hand, too, if he hadn’t been so busy doubled over and wheezing with laughter.)

But he can’t. He can’t do any of that, because he’s scared of why it’s gotten harder to keep the voices down for longer, why it’s so much easier for them to break his defences down and whirl through his mind, throwing poisonous darts of insecurity and anxiety and depression at any good thought that passes through. He’s scared that his Seal isn’t the only thing he broke on his nineteenth birthday.

Lance is shaken out of his apprehensive brooding by them finally making it to the bridge, where they all gather around in front of Coran while Allura does her…thing…with the Castle’s controls to set them on course to the planet in need of help.

“Take your time,” Coran says in greeting, snapping the heels of his boots together like Dorothy with her sparkling red shoes. “Your reaction time last night was much faster, I must say.”

“We were being attacked by Galra,” Keith points out.

And Hunk will say, _Explosions tend –_ “–to get you moving faster, y’know.”

“Plus, we’re still a varga or so from actually reaching the planet.” Pidge adds, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Plenty of time to hear what you have on the planet and its inhabitants, and get in our armour, and get to our Lions.”

Lance shuffles a little backwards so that he’s standing behind the group, though not quite so far back as to stand leaning against the wall the way Keith is. He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose, exhaling slowly and trying to get his frazzled nerves under control. So what if he’s experiencing some intense déjà vu? He’s gone through this once before, he can get through it again and come out whole by the end of it.

He hopes.

He’s trying to be optimistic here, okay?

Lance drags his attention back to focus on the matter at hand when he catches the tail-end of Coran beginning to explain something of the planet they’re approaching. As he listens, having learnt his listen with Xyphelia about _not_ paying attention, his hand trails up and he pulls his pendant (a gold adornment the size of quarter of his hand, in the exact same shape as his family sigil) out from under his shirt. He idly toys with it, drawing solace from its metal surface warmed by close contact to his skin.

Coran pulls up a hologram of swirling star systems, swiping his hands through them as he quickly scrolls to a single solar system that looks like Earth’s, if it orbited in a triangular shape. “The planet is called Ladene, part of the Hladna Studen solar system in the NCMA-2048 quadrant. The system only has three planets, the largest two of the three, Veliki and Mali,” he points at first one large red dot, then another slightly smaller yellow dot on opposite ends of the system. “Being gas planets, uninhabitable by any known species.”

“Ladene’s the one that the distress signal is coming from?” Shiro asks, arms crossed, his Galra arm catching stray factions of light from the swirling stars in the hologram. It makes the arm look a little purple –and not the nasty Galra purple, but kind of that purple you catch at the edges of your vision when it’s twilight, and the sun’s hovering on the edge of the horizon, and it’s a little closer to dark than it is to light.

“Affirmative, number one.” Coran nods, tapping the much smaller blue dot that hovers between its two bigger sisters. “The third planet, Ladene itself, is entirely covered in ice, with an ocean similar to your Earth’s Arctic sea covering eighty-three percent of its surface, with no discernible difference in weather patterns.” He spins the hologram around, and it speeds up to show the three planets following each other in a triangular rotation around the sun in the middle that looks like it’s approaching its red dwarf stage. “Ladene’s distance from its system’s sun means that it only gets close enough for some warmth once a decaphoeb, which roughly equates to seven hundred and forty-eight of your Earth days.”

“Damn,” Pidge murmurs, tapping her bottom lips thoughtfully as she closely watches the holographic simulation. “That’s a lot of cold weather. That’s, like, over a hundred of our winters between each time Ladene draws near its sun.”

“What about Galra?” Keith asks. If Lance hadn’t already known Keith was right behind him by the wall, he’s sure he’d have lost another couple of years from his life at how suddenly Keith speaks up. “Any signs of them on the planet? It could be a trap.”

“Yeah, are there any in like, the whole of this system?” Lance puts in, because from the way Hunk’s repeatedly glancing over at him, he knows he’s being too quiet right now. Like, uncharacteristically quiet. As in, quiet enough that it might attract Shiro’s attention, and he doesn’t want to be treated like a china doll just because his magic was drained from breaking his Seal a few days ago. Being mollycoddled might sound like his cup of tea considering his carefree personality, but no, no it is not, because sitting around doing _nothing_ is _boring as hell._

Coran shakes his head. “As a matter of fact, no, there’s no indication of Galran presence here, or any residual matter left over from Galran wormholes. I can’t quite tell if they’re _on_ Ladene, though –the three moons orbiting Ladene are causing a substantial amount of satellite interference. There’s no way to know if the Galra are down there already without going to see for ourselves.”

Shiro nods pensively. “Better to go down prepared for it being a trap, then. The distress signal is either because of the Galra, or it could be solely to do with the native population.”

“Maybe they’re having a disagreement?” Hunk asks.

And now Lance knows to say, “What, the ruler stuck his hand in the cookie jar when it’s against the law and now he’s sending out a distress signal for us to save him?”

Hunk snorts. “You’ve got a funny imagination, man.”

Lance shoots him finger guns with a sly smirk. “You have no idea.”

Shiro asks, “Is there any record of civil unrest, Coran?”

“Mhm,” Coran hums, nodding. “I updated the Castle’s archives a little while after the Princess and I woke up from cytogenetic stasis. Not gotten round to translating it to English, however. Just a tick.” He quickly scans the Altean writing that appears hovering before him before turning back to the Paladins. “No major civil unrest over the last one thousand phoebs. However, there was some political intrigue and an attempted assassination of the Ladenian’s reigning ruler roughly sixteen decaphoebs ago. That would be fourteen to eighteen years on Earth. The perpetrator, unnamed, was exiled from the planet, which is the worst punishment a Ladenian can be sentenced to.”

“Yeesh,” Hunk mumbles, looking uncomfortable by the heaviness of the news. “I wonder what the guy –or girl, or girl,” he adds quickly at Pidge’s flat stare. “Must have done to get exiled from the entire planet.”

“He or she or they probably deserved it, whatever it was.” Pidge answers, shrugging. “Hey Coran, do you have any information in the archives on what the Ladene people look like?” she asks, ever inquisitive at the idea of a species living in such harsh conditions. “Or what the temperature equivalent is to Earth Fahrenheit or Celsius, and what their physiobiological makeup is that they can survive it?”

“As a matter of fact, there are several images of what the Ladenians look like,” Coran looks oddly proud (actually, not that odd. The man’s pride and joy is the Castle. It’s his child) as he pulls up his tablet and taps out something on it. “The Ladenians may be one of the more reclusive alien species inhabiting the universe, certainly this quadrant, but they’re still seen around space malls and visiting other planets and such.”

For the first time since waking up that morning, Lance doesn’t know, can’t even guess, what Coran is about to say or do next. He straightens when he realizes this, blinking several times in surprise. The only other experience he has to go on for last time he went through a day thinking he’d already done everything he had, it hadn’t ended well. He actually can’t really remember how he’d realized he didn’t know what was about to happen next.

Is it supposed to be like this? If so, what did he do? What’s different about this time, what deviates from the voice’s memory enough that he’s finally snapped out of this quasi-Groundhog day loop? This is supposed to be a good thing. He _knows_ it is, but why does he feel like there’s a pit of scorpions nestled in his stomach?

“Ah, here it is,” Coran says triumphantly, moustache twitching up at his beaming smile.

He flicks a finger across the tablet’s screen to send whatever’s on it onto the hologram. The entire team eagerly wait as the hologram loads it, with Keith moving closer so as to get a better look. Two seconds later, a picture of an alien pops up in place of the triangular solar system, an alien that looks like an ice sculpture, or like a white walker.

Lance’s entire world ends zeroes in on the image so fast he almost gives himself whiplash, needles pricking his skin as ice flows through his veins when he finds himself looking into those eyes –the eyes of the Beast, the king of his worst nightmare.

 

 

Keith doesn’t shift closer to the group to see the picture Coran’s loaded better. He could see it perfectly fine from his place at the wall. No, he moves closer so he can maybe better see what’s on the end of the black leather cord tied around Lance’s neck that he’s noticed a few times before. He moves closer to watch the strange shift of expressions on Lance’s face, try to figure out what’s wrong with him, even though he’s not good with emotions to begin with.

(His own usually included.)

He noticed something off about the Blue Paladin the second he walked into the kitchen that morning, but he was too brain-dead at the time to think much of it. It was only when Pidge flung her disgustingly bitter coffee at him that he woke up enough to see that Lance wasn’t acting the way he usually does.

For one, he wasn’t actively flirting with Allura, something Lance does religiously every single morning at breakfast before tapering down after she pays him back for the bad pickup lines during the team’s brutal morning training sessions. He didn’t regale Shiro with hilarious stories of the multitude of weird exploits he and his many siblings had gotten into while back home in Cuba. Lance didn’t forage through the many storage units in the kitchen that Hunk usually hides the many, many snacks he makes in the middle of the night when his anxiety has him unable to fall asleep. Lance didn’t delve into any deep and strangely on-point analysis with Pidge about characters or plots of whatever weird TV shows and movies the two had both watched while still on Earth.

(The shows aren’t cryptid related, so he’s being generous when he dubs anything else as ‘weird’).

Lance wasn’t the one poking at Keith to get him to wake up after a night of staying up too late training, or trying to wake him by riling him up enough with cocky assurance about whatever impending victory he was imagining he’d get over whatever competition he’d thought up to goad Keith into agreeing to.

Keith warily eyes what he can see of Lance’s tattoo over the hoodie under his jacket. He doesn’t know if Lance is acting weird because of the Seal, or if it’s something else this time. He’s been getting back up to shape steadily the whole week since everything went down, no more fainting since they’d left Xyphelia, eating properly, joking around and (maybe unknowingly) pulling his friends out of whatever dark spirals their minds were going down before he got to them.

(So far as Keith’s seen, Lance is the only one able to calm Hunk down from an anxiety attack, just by touching his arm or hugging him. It astounds Keith, as if he’s performing actual magic.)

He was able to train with the team for longer and longer before he had to take a break thanks to his depleted magic eating up into the energy he has for regular physical activities as it tries to restore itself and making him get tired faster (Keith’s not sure he understands all that, but it’s how Lance explained it when Shiro asked why he’d get genuinely exhausted after the first team training since they’d left Xyphelia). So, on the outside, Keith would say that Lance looks like he’s well on the mend.

Except today, something’s bothering Lance. He’s known for being a distracted, scatter-brained mess at best of times, but that’s always interspersed with bad flirting and jokes. Now, now he’s distracted in the Not-Good-Lance way; the way that has him somewhat oblivious to the concerned looks Hunk is giving him, the wary watch of Shiro’s eyes, Pidge saying something to him twice before he focuses on her.

Keith doesn’t know if he should call Lance out for trying to hide whatever’s bothering him, or pull Shiro aside and point it out since the Black Paladin’s clearly already stressed enough with their almost never-ending fights against the Galra. He knows he should probably talk to Shiro about his concerns, but he figures, until he has something concrete he’ll just lie low and watch Lance, make sure there’s actually something wrong. Keith might be as smart as a hunk of wood when it comes to social cues and emotions, but he’s not so dumb enough that he can’t see the flash of irritation in Lance’s eyes whenever the team start getting a little smothering in their efforts to make sure he gets better. And if things get really bad and Lance still refuses to admit it, there’s always Coran to subtly suggest giving Lance a medical scan.

It’s thanks to this that he’s not really paying any attention like the others are to the alien in the picture, or listening to Coran’s translation of the Altean information pulled up next to the picture. It’s thanks to this that he sees Lance’s face implode, drain of colour, his pupils blowing wide enough that the black completely swallows up the blue, hands shaking as he lets go of the pendant he’s been fingering.

Keith can only describe the look on Lance’s face as one of absolute terror.

This isn’t the kind they all have at the monumental weight of battling an impossibly powerful dictator for the freedom of the universe, and what’ll happen if they fail (maybe Keith’s is more anger than fear). This isn’t the kind of fear that has Hunk cooking and baking his way through the nights because he’s scared of dying, or his friends dying, and never returning to Earth and his home again. This isn’t the kind they have at facing Zarkon down like Keith had once recklessly done, or surviving Haggar’s twisted Druidic magic and all the experimental Robeasts she sends their way. This isn’t even the kind of fear that had been on Lance’s face when King Lykonark demanded he reveal his secret to his team or the Xyphelian alliance would be called off.

This is the pure, unadulterated fear of an injured animal cornered by a hunter with teeth to rip through flesh and bone.

Keith frowns, glancing around. No one else has noticed Lance’s horrified reaction to the alien’s image. Pidge and Coran are talking about the Ladenians and what their biochemistry is like (or something). Hunk is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Shiro as their leader listens to what Hunk’s saying about taking Yellow down to the planet to scout first, considering his Lion’s sturdy stature, and probably Blue, too. Allura’s still at her pedestal, hands on the glowing controls as she steers the Castle towards…something.

(Keith’s not quite sure how Allura pilots the Castle.)

Keith turns back at the alien on the screen. It doesn’t look weird, although that bar isn’t too high considering all the different types of species they’ve come across since getting to space. The Ladenian is humanoid, looks like it’s literally been made out of ice, skin tinged a frigid blue colour, somehow looking papery despite its frozen appearance. The alien appears male, with a head of spiked ice that looks like some sort of a crown, or a weird version of a buzz cut.

If this is what Ladenians look like, then he figures it’s safe to say they look like winter personified.

The Ladenian’s eyes are what sends fingers of unease traipsing down Keith’s spine. They’re blue, but they have an odd, flat sort of quality to them. Like whoever created them, if someone at all, forgot to add in all the lines and curves in the iris that gives them the appearance of life. Now, as Keith looks into those cold eyes, all he can think of is that it’s like looking at the eyes of a corpse.

No one else has noticed Lance’s reaction, but they all turn in surprise when they hear him stumble. Keith looks back to see Lance has backed away from the hologram, eyes wide, shaking his head like his trying to throw off dark thoughts, and that it was his station’s chair that he didn’t see he was backing into.

Shiro immediately zeroes in on the pallor of Lance’s face. “Lance?” he turns, uncrossing his arms as he takes a step forward. His face registers surprise when Lance scrambles back from him, Lance whose gaze is pinned on the alien in the holographic picture, lips shaping words that make no sound.

“Lance?” Hunk asks, slowly inching toward Lance, hands raised, as if Lance is a ticking bomb seconds from going nuclear. “Buddy, are you okay? What’s wrong?”

Lance stares at the picture almost unseeingly, shaking his head repeatedly, lips trembling. His breath comes out in short, harsh gasps, and Keith can see the rigid lines of his body held in whipcord tight tension, like a bowstring drawn taut. He’s rubbing his wrists against the fabric of his jeans, up and down, down and up, over and over again, like a nervous tic that grounds him. He swallows several times before a semblance of clarity returns to his eyes as he finally looks at Hunk, and Shiro, and a confused and nervous Pidge and Coran having moved to stand next to them, everyone facing Lance, with Keith in the middle off to the side.

“I –” he pauses, eyes jumping nervously from the picture, to his team, to Allura standing behind them and watching with a consternated frown on her face, to the stars beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass wall. He’s stopped moving away from them, but Keith doesn’t try to come closer, able to tell from the tension lining his body that he’s a split-second from running. “I –I can’t, I can’t –I can’t go down there.”

For a second, no one knows how to respond. They always answer distress signals, even when they look suspicious, even when they’re possible traps. Allura has ingrained in all of them that they must answer all distress signals, because there’s always someone in need of help, and they’re the only ones strong enough to help those who can’t do it for themselves. Even though Lance makes a big show of wanting parades and parties thrown for them, Lance will always be up for helping people, no matter the danger to himself.

(Keith is beginning to wonder if Lance has self-sacrificing tendencies bordering on suicidal.)

“Why not?” Pidge asks. She tries to go for gentle, but her tone is a little snappish still. “I mean, sure, it’s going to be cold as hell, but –” she cuts herself off at the rapid shake off Lance’s head, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows again. She frowns. “Then what is it?”

“I –I can’t, I just –” frustration briefly overcomes the fear in his eyes as he bares his teeth a little, running his hands through his hair, sending the brown strands that have grown over the months wildly askew. His entire body is wracked with fine tremors, and Keith finds himself struck with a strange sense of déjà vu, because Lance looks the exact same way he did when he couldn’t tell them what his secret was.

He’s hiding something.

Keith just has no idea what it could have to do with an ice alien none of them have ever encountered before. Keith wants to ask what’s wrong –he pretty much wants to _demand_ what’s wrong, because last time Lance was acting strange, everyone (Keith) thought he was going to die. He still has flashes of memories of seeing Lance on the floor of the common room, body rigid as he convulsed with blood seeping out of every crevice, out of places blood shouldn’t flow from.

Keith will absolutely never admit it, but it was hard for him to see that, to feel so completely and utterly useless because he didn’t know what was going on, and even if he did, he wasn’t medically (somewhat) trained like Coran. Even Pidge, tech-savvy gremlin, was able to help more than he was, while Hunk was there to detail what kinds of things could possibly set of Lance’s allergies.

All Keith knows is what rudimentary field medic stuff the Garrison taught him. Knowing how to do CPR and knowing to turn Lance on his side in that apparently magically induced seizure weren’t exactly helpful in actually figuring out what was wrong and how to stop it.

But now, Keith bites his tongue and forces himself to stay back and watch. Lance isn’t having a bloody seizure, he has to remind himself. He’s physically fine, and whatever’s wrong with him now, it’s not something Keith can physically beat away. If he’s going to figure out what’s wrong now, he’ll let the others talk to Lance; they’re better at the whole talking thing anyways.

(He thinks Shiro would be proud of him for using his head rather than his fists, like he’s always reminding Keith to do.)

“Lance,” Shiro says, voice quiet and gentle, but firm. “Just calm down. Let’s talk about this, all right?”

Lance shakes his head, twitching back when Shiro tries to step forward.

Shiro stops, confusion on his face. “Lance, what’s wrong? You know you can tell us. Maybe we can help. We’re a team.”

Hunk seems to have come to the same conclusion Keith has, but where Keith decides to keep his silence and watch, Hunk takes a very slow step forward, hands where Lance can see them. “Lance, it’s okay. Can you tell us what’s wrong?”

Everyone’s obviously wondering if this is something like the Seal, or has something to do with it.

“Is it your magic, my boy?” Coran asks softly, making no move to get closer but obviously just waiting for permission to do so and flutter with worry over the boy.

Allura taps her fingers on the glowing controls quickly before stepping down and approaching the group. “Why can’t you go down to Ladene? What do you mean, you ‘can’t go’?”

“Lance,” Keith speaks up, ignoring the flash of hurt he feels when Lance flinches at the sound of his voice. “The Ladenians sent out a distress signal. We’ve got to answer it, you know that. We’re wasting time right now.”

“Keith,” Shiro mumbles, but Keith doesn’t back down from staring (glaring).

“I can’t –I just, that’s not –” Lance shoves his hands through his hair again, ruffing it up. “He’s not –they’re not _good,_ and I just can’t go down there.”

Keith frowns. “You’re not making any sense, Lance.”

And why does it look like Lance _knows_ the Ladenians, when none of them have ever even been in this quadrant before? It couldn’t be that Lance found these aliens on his own after the wormhole accident –he’d been flung far-off on the other side of the galaxy, nowhere near this solar system.

“Yeah,” Pidge says, pushing her glasses up her nose as they slide off when she nods vigorously. “We’re Paladins of Voltron, we don’t just get to decide we’re not going to help someone just because they look like white walkers. I’ll explain later,” she quickly adds when Allura turns to her, baffled at the term.

Somehow, someway, that’s the wrong thing to say. Lance’s face twists into a mask of pain before he shakes his head mutely, turning a pleading gaze to his best friend, but Hunk still looks confused, trying the best he can. “Then what is it? We’re done with secrets, remember?”

That seems to snap something inside of him. His face crumples, sorrow painting harsh lines as a whine sounds at the back of his throat, his eyebrows wrinkling as he bites his lip hard enough to draw blood. “No, you don’t –you don’t _understand,_ the Be –” he cuts himself off by audibly snapping his mouth shut, teeth clacking. He freezes, eyes wide as cherry pies, staring sightlessly at Hunk, trembling from head to toe.

Then Lance does exactly what Keith was afraid he’d do.

One second, Lance is standing in front of them. The next, he winks out of sight and reappears at the door, slamming his hand on the sensor to get it open and sprints out of the bridge once it is, long legs carrying him fast enough out the door that no one’s able to move for a second, stunned that Lance is running away.

He’s fucking _running away,_ from them.

Shiro is the first to move to action. He claps Hunk on the back, and moves toward the doorway, calling back to Allura to continue planning the recon –and if necessary, rescue/save –mission while he goes to talk to Lance. Keith takes half a step to go after them, intent on finding out what’s wrong with Lance, why he looked the way he did, more scared than Keith had ever seen him. Shiro gives him a stern look when he catches the movement, and tells him to hang back, and that it’s better not to overcrowd Lance right now.

Keith begrudgingly relents, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall again as he, Hunk, Pidge, and the two Alteans proceed. The planning is strained, though, heavy with the silence where there are supposed to be playful quips and flirting teases thrown around. Everyone’s minds buzzes with confusion at Lance’s odd behaviour. Keith can barely pay attention, and that’s rare for him, because he’s always laser-focused during mission planning.

(And typically irritated or angry during debriefing if the mission didn’t go well. If it did, he’ll celebrate by going at it with the gladiators in training.)

They’re just wrapping up the details of their mission plan when Shiro returns. Allura turns to him hopefully, but no one follows behind Shiro as the door slides shut behind him, entering alone. Her face falls and she purses her lips.

“What happened?” Hunk asks before she can get anything out, wringing his hands worriedly. “Did he say what’s wrong?”

“No,” Shiro sighs heavily, running a hand through his white tuft of hair. “He’s in his room. He wouldn’t even let me in, just kept saying that he can’t go down to Ladene with us. And that’s what we’ll have to do, I guess.”

“But the Blue Lion could be so useful for us,” Pidge interjects, looking irritated, as if Lance is just pulling another one of his annoying antics. “She’s the guardian of water, and her connection with Lance is giving him actual ice powers. We are going to a planet _covered_ in ice. This should be his element.”

Allura nods. “Yes, it would be beneficial to have Lance come.” She gestures at Keith. “We’d thought about letting Keith stay behind due to the Red Lion not being equipped enough, as the Green and Yellow Lions are, to venture down to Ladene. No offense intended, Keith.”

He shrugs, understanding, as he stares at the picture of the alien still floating a few feet above them, as if it will give him the answers he seeks. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t get Lance’s terrified face out of his mind when he saw the picture. “No problem.”

“We’ll just have to make do with everyone here.” Shiro sighs again, crossing his arms as he nods thankfully at Coran who silently pulls up the schematics of the plan they made in his absence up to the hologram. “He promises that if things go south and we need backup that he’ll be there, but as for going down without it being an emergency,” he shakes his head. “It’s a no-go. Whatever’s going on with him, he needs some time on his own.”

“At the expense of Voltron?” Allura asks sharply. “At the expense of all the people depending on us, the Ladenians being one of them?”

“He did promise to come if things get bad,” Hunk meekly points out, not eager to have Allura’s ire focused on him.

“He needs time, Princess,” Shiro repeats, voice firm. He’s not rude, he’d never be rude to Allura, but his tone brooks no argument. “This isn’t the first time I’m seeing Lance behave strangely, although this is the worst.”

“What do you mean?” she presses, clearly not willing to leave well enough alone.

Shiro hesitates, gaze flickering from Allura’s determined lilac-turquoise eyes to the image of the Ladenian, before returning to Allura. “Lance…I think he has flashbacks.”

Keith frowns. Of all things, he never expected to hear Shiro say that about Lance. “You mean like yours?”

Shiro nods. “Remember the training session we had before reaching Xyphelia? When he froze up before the gladiator hit him?” everyone nods, recalling Lance’s odd behaviour then. “I don’t know how severe it was, or what triggered it, but I think it happened because he was having a flashback.”

“A flashback? As in, PTSD flashback?” Hunk asks, a nervous edge to his voice. Keith glances over at him; he looks so worried for his friend. He’s biting his nails now, eyebrows wrinkled as he shifts his weight from one foot to the other, clearly wanting to go after Lance himself, but heeding Shiro’s words.

Allura asks, “To what?” she turns to the younger Paladins, Keith standing beside Hunk and Pidge. “Do you know if something happened to him back on Earth that could leave him traumatized?”

All three shake their heads.

“Iverson was a shi –was pretty crappy to him,” Pidge says. “But not that bad.”

“But considering he’s managed to keep being a Witch a secret from us for so long, I don’t think it’d be hard for him to hide other things.” Keith mutters.

Allura purses her lips, carefully considering their words. After a moment she sighs heavily. “All right. Paladins, suit up and head to your Lions. You’ll investigate the distress signal and its origins, and report back before further action is taken. Shiro,” she looks to him. “Are you sure Lance will come if you need help?”

Shiro nods, utterly sure. “Yes, he will. Lance doesn’t break his promises.”

“And what of his present state of mind?” Allura asks, not quite so confident as he is. For some reason, that irks Keith. If Lance promised that he’d come, why is she doubting him? Like Shiro says –Lance doesn’t break the promises he makes. “Will he be _able_ to help you if he’s possibly dealing with something from his past?”

Oh. That’s why. He’d barely been able to form a sentence when he was here, facing his team. If it’s true that Lance has flashbacks, and it’s because of some kind of PTSD he’s never mentioned to anyone, and it all has something to do with the Ladenians, and if he’s _anything_ like Shiro is when he’s in the grips of a flashback, will Lance be able to help them if they find themselves in a bind?

Yes. Yes, he will. Keith has no idea where the confidence in that belief comes from, but he knows that it will take something monumental to keep Lance from fulfilling his Paladin duties. Maybe, in the beginning, Keith would have doubted Lance just like Allura is now. But he’s seen how hard Lance works for his position on the team. He’s caught Lance sneaking into the training room when everyone’s supposed to be asleep, has seen the training logs he spied over Coran’s shoulder that show Lance’s level to be far above what he programs when everyone’s training together.

All Allura (and probably the rest of the team excluding Hunk) knows of Lance is the façade he puts on. The endlessly flirting joker who rarely takes anything seriously. But there’s a determined, loyal soldier beneath that mask he wears, a soldier who will do what needs to be done to protect those who can’t protect themselves, who will be there for his teammates when they need him.

“He will.” Keith says firmly, fixing his gaze on Allura’s and not looking away. “If he promised he’ll come, then he’ll come.”

Silence reigns. No one expected Keith to vouch for Lance, especially not with such assuredness. He takes no notice of the looks Pidge and Hunk send him before glancing at each other.

Finally, Allura nods tersely. “I hope you are right.”

Keith refuses to entertain any thought otherwise.

“He was really afraid, guys,” Pidge remarks quietly. They all turn to her, but she’s not looking at them. Instead, she’s staring up at the picture of the Ladenian, eyebrows furrowed, lips in a flat line. “He didn’t even look like that when King Lykonark practically forced him to reveal his secret. He’s _never_ looked like that, and we’ve all faced some scary things.”

“He looked...” Coran strokes his moustache thoughtfully, frowning as he turns to look at the Ladenian’s picture again. “Have you all noticed what the prisoners we’ve rescued look like? Especially the ones from Malakni.”

“The ones we worked with the Blade to rescue?” Hunk asks.

Coran nods. “They were treated terribly by the Galra soldiers they were imprisoned by. Despite the Blade helping us to liberate them from Galran control, they were absolutely terrified of Kolivan and his men.”

Keith remembers that. He remembers being angry with the Malakni for being so scared of Kolivan and Antok and the rest of the Blades. He remembers wondering if they’d look at him like that if it was more widely known that he’s half-Galra. He remembers thinking that they should have been more grateful considering the Blade of Marmora were the reason the Malakni had been freed at all.

And he remembers Lance nudging his shoulder with his own, a sad look in his eye as he said, _Stop scowling at ’em, niño bonito. It sucks, yeah, but they’ve suffered at the hands of Galra for a long time. Can you really blame them for being scared of more Galra, even if they’re good?_

“He looked like that,” Pidge murmurs, coming to the realization a second before Keith. She, too, turns to the Ladenian’s picture, frowning mightily at it, as if it is a puzzle whose entirety continues to escape her grasp. “But why? What is it about this alien,” she reaches up and taps the hologram lightly. It shimmers in place before settling again. “That could make him look like that?”

↭§↭

It takes Lance an hour, and then some, to calm down from the panic attack he just barely manages to fight tooth and nails to keep from consuming him.

The only thing Lance remembers of it, really remembers, not logically knows that he thought this and felt that, the only thing he actually remembers of it was the struggle to breathe. His mouth kept opening and closing, his chest expanding, but he couldn’t get enough air in his lungs. Beyond the panic, the fear coursing through his veins at the sight of the Beast staring blankly back at him from the hologram, was the memory of the last time he hadn’t been able to breathe.

Then the images, _memories,_ started. Memories of razor sharp teeth snapping at his neck, of meaty, slippery flesh being torn off bone, of blood slipping over his fingers like so much water. They consumed him until he couldn’t see his room in the Castle anymore, until all he could see was memories soaked in red interlaced with brief moments of darkness before another memory washed over him.

They ended when he stood over his brother’s dead body, covered in Alex’s blood.

That memory has anger surging through him, anger at his own pathetic weakness, anger at the fact that even now, in space, so far away from his nightmare that he can’t even imagine the distance in his mind without feeling like there’s still a trillion miles shaved off from his estimate, he’s still so afraid of the Beast. The anger of his own fear makes him remember his promise to _forget_ the fear, to push past the fear, to overcome it.

Slowly, inch by inch, harsh breath by harsh breath, he fights off the panic, screaming into his pillow, beating it away by rocking back and forth in a foetal position, nails scratching against the whitened scars on the insides of his wrist in an effort to make it hurt, to focus on any other pain but the one in his mind. Slowly, the panic fades, and the strength with which he holds himself curled into a tight, tight, _tight_ ball abruptly leaves him, and he slumps over, drained.

He lies on the floor, panting, barely able to catch his breath as he stares up foggily at his ceiling. His entire body is wracked in fine tremors that make him feel like the floor beneath him is vibrating –but of course it’s not. It’s him, shaking, heart pounding in his chest, so hard that he thinks he can feel its imprint with the hand he has on his chest, blood rushing through his head loud enough that it feels like he’s sitting under a waterfall.

He wonders if this is what Shiro feels like, if he ever wakes up alone and scared of the dark but even more afraid of venturing out into the light. He wonders if Shiro’s ever afraid of going out into the light and finding that the nightmares gripping his mind and locking his muscles in place were all just in his head, and out in the bland lights of the Castle, out with the rest of the team, out _there_ is the reality.

He wonders if Shiro ever feels that sickening lurch in his stomach when he thinks about all the things that must have happened to him to make him have those nightmares and panic attacks in the first place. He wonders if Shiro ever thinks it would be better if he just didn’t remember any of it.

Lance wonders if the aftershocks of the electric panic surging through his shivering limbs now would still be there, or if they would be as strong, if he didn’t remember _why_ they were there in the first place.

He wonders if he would have been able to come up with a passable excuse for why he felt like the floor had fallen away from his feet at the sight of the Beast ( _no, no, the_ Ladenian, _the alien that looks like the Beast, oh gods oh gods oh godstheresaliensthatlooklikethebeasttheresanentireplanetfullofbeastsnolancenolancegetawaystopstopstopalexalexcomebackalliemakeitgoaway_ ) staring back at him from the holographic picture. He wonders, if he didn’t remember _why_ he was so scared, would he still be here? Alone, in his room, on the floor, recovering from a panic attack, having run away from his friends and yelled at Shiro to leave him alone while they go off to the planet _full of aliens just like the Beast._

Or would nothing have changed and he’d still end up here?

When his breathing finally calms down some, enough that the black spots flowering in the corners of his eyes disappear, he pushes himself to sit up against his bed, groaning as his bones creak from moving after sitting stiff for so long. The effort of moving after such a violent reach has him panting by the time he settles like a limp ragdoll against the bed, staring unseeingly at the closed door of his bathroom across from him. The sweat beading at his forehead and under his arms and the back of his knees is cooling as he sits still, and he knows he should go to the bathroom to fresh himself up, but for now he just…sits.

The false calm doesn’t last long before Allura’s voice over the Castle’s speakers jerks him out of his semi-unconscious daze.

“Lance! _Lance!”_

He’s never heard her sound so frantic.

He leaps to his feet, muscles burning with protest at the sudden movement. He dashes to the door and slams his hand on the console on the other side of the scanner that controls the open-close function of the door. “What, what happened?”

If his voice comes out hoarse and shaky from his pillow-screaming, Allura either doesn’t notice or chooses to make no comment on it.

“The distress signal,” Allura says briskly, getting straight to the point. “It was an ambush by –”

Lance’s stomach curls, filling with acidic fear, and he interrupts her before she can finish. “Was it the Be –the Ladenians?”

“What? No,” she sounds flustered, and Lance wonders just how bad the situation is. He’s set the console on speaker so that he can hear what she’s saying as he dashes to his closet and presses a button that reveals the hidden compartment all Paladin’s have that stores their armour. He starts stripping and getting himself fitted out as fast as he can while Allura continues. “No, it wasn’t the Ladenians. It’s the Galra. They’re using some kind of jamming signal that blocks us from reaching them down there. Even the Lions are out of reach.”

Lance frowns. That’s new –the Galra have certainly tried to block communications between the Paladins helmets before, but it’s never really worked out. Sounds like they’ve got it working now –but how can whatever it is they’ve done to jam the helmets be working on the Lions, too?

His gut twists tighter. What if it’s them? The –the Ladenians?

“How do you know it’s the Galra?”

“A Galra battlecruiser has just wormholed inside Ladene’s atmosphere,” Coran answers. “We think there’s a unit of soldiers already on the ground that have ambushed the rest of the team, likely the distress signal was a trap from the beginning, while the battlecruiser’s been sent to provide reinforcements. They’re fast approaching Ladene’s surface.”

“Listen,” Allura comes on again, sounding stern but still gentle, somehow. “I know that Shiro said to give you time to deal with whatever is wrong, but before we were cut off, it sounded like they were being overwhelmed. The distress signal is located underground, in a system of tunnels, and they had to leave their Lions to get inside. Without their Lions and surrounded by Galra, they have no way out. They need you, Lance –”

“I promised I’d be there if it’s an emergency,” he says, not the least bit guilty about interrupting her. No, the guilt he feels now is angrier, _infuriated_ at himself for being selfish enough to just run out in the middle of mission planning, and leaving his team, his friends, _his family,_ to fend for themselves. “I don’t know about you Princess, but this counts as one. I’ll be in the hangar in two min –dobashes.”

“Hurry, Lance,” she says, and clicks off.

Lance’s hand goes to the pendant at his throat, staring down at its golden surface wrought into the shape of his family’s sigil. His hand closes around it as he hesitates, shifting from foot to foot in indecision, an overwhelming tirade of anxiety for his friends and fear of where he’s about to go washing over him. He presses his lips into a thin line before pulling the necklace off and carefully setting it on his table, staring at it for a moment before shaking his head and hurrying to get his armour on.

He doesn’t know why Ladene is a planet full of aliens that look identical to the Beast. The pendant has magic in it, and the Beast senses magic, can taste and track and _find_ the source of the magic. Lance can control his own magic, mute it so that those who are sensitive to it won’t be able to tell it’s there. The magic from his Seal is gone, now, petering out to dregs of nothing when he broke the binding spell. But the pendant has its own magic that he can’t control –it was made so that he’d never be able to tamper with it, so that it would always do what it’s supposed to do for him. If he goes down to Ladene, a _planet_ full of Beasts, and has to face a Ladenian, he doesn’t want to risk them sensing the pendant’s magic and attack him.

He feels naked without it around his neck. Exposed to the harsh winds. Weak. Susceptible to the voices that eddy like murky waters in his mind. Vulnerable to their poisonous words.

 _It’s only for a little while,_ he assures himself. _Just get down there, get your team out, and come back and put it back on. In, out, simple._

Lance gets himself fitted out in record time, fingers fumbling only a little in his rush as he straps on his chest plate and armoured gauntlets. Before he’s even completely done he’s out the door and sprinting toward Blue’s hangar, holding his helmet in the crook of his elbow while hurriedly checking over his armour to make sure everything’s in place. He slides into the hangar, Blue sensing his harried panic and disintegrating her particle shield as she lowers her head to the ground, opening her mouth so that he can dash in and head straight to the cockpit.

Blue rumbles as the hangar doors open, worry for her sisters urging Lance to go as fast as he can when they shoot out of the hangar. Lance warily eyes the ice blue planet that comes in sight once the navigation system kicks in and points him in the right direction to go. His déjà vu is gone, now, chased off by his panic attack and the sheer shock of seeing the Beast and finding out there’s a whole _planet_ full of them.

A planet he let his teammates go down to without warning them of _why_ he was so afraid.

A planet that the Galra used to send out a decoy distress signal to lure the Paladins into a trap.

Lance doesn’t know if the fact that he remained behind and can now go in to help them get out is a good thing or not. Would anything have changed if he’d gone with them? Or would it be worse, with no possibility for back-up with the Castle in the communication’s dark?

He guides Blue closer to the planet and her system’s pick up a spot of purple surrounded by a tundra of chilly blue. One of the screens zooms in on the image, and what meagre food goo he’d managed to consume that morning(?) curdles in his stomach.

It’s definitely a Galra cruiser.

And those are definitely Galra soldiers trooping out of the damn thing.

Shit.

“Princess, can you hear me?”

“A little fuzzy,” she replies, crackling over the helmet’s comms in an abnormal this-is-some-kind-of-interference way. “But yes. What do you see?”

“I’m approaching the atmosphere,” Lance answers, sending the live video feed of the Galra cruiser to a corner of the view screens so he can focus on manoeuvring Blue down to the planet without alerting said Galra cruiser to his presence. “I can see the Galra, but they haven’t noticed me yet.”

_Let’s pray I can remain lucky with this one thing._

“Good,” she says. “Because there is an incoming fleet of Galra ships, but the Castle should be able to handle them. Hopefully no additional reinforcements will surprise us.”

“Hopefully,” he mutters darkly. Really, he doesn’t put much faith in ‘hope’. Hope has regularly screwed him over like the temperamental bitch it is. Forgive him for dropping his happy-go mask and being salty about damn ‘hope’.

Blue amusedly hushes his attempts to personify hope and give it a verbal berating.

“If they’re doing something to jam communications,” Coran adds. “This might be the last time we’ll be able to talk without interference before you’re cut off completely after you pass through Ladene’s atmospheric pressure.”

Lance nods, leg bouncing on the cockpit’s floor in a nervous, jittery tic as he asks, “Where did the others land?”

“Northeast of your current trajectory.” Coran says. “The Castle’s readings show that the Galra on the planet haven’t gotten to the tunnel yet, they’re still disembarking more than a dozen droids from the cruiser, but you’ll have to hurry, Lance. The others left the Lions outside the entrance to the tunnel.”

“Great,” he mumbles. “So it’s like a giant multi-coloured neon arrow pointing the Galra right to the tunnel, gotcha.”

He frowns when the comms in his helmet crackle, but no reply comes through. He taps the button on the inside of his helmet, listening to the crackle fizzle out as he switches the comm off, then on again. Still nothing. He tries the other Paladins’ helmets, Keith’s, Hunk’s, Pidge’s, Shiro’s, but only static greets his efforts.

Dammit.

“Looks like it’s just you and me, girl. Let’s get war ready.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do I actually know what a short chapter is? Like, this here chapter 1 was originally 20k before I decided nope, that’s too much, and split it in half. I have a feeling this will be happening a lot, me just regurgitating words in coherent patterns to form a story.
> 
> Do I regret this? No.
> 
> Am I going to try and limit how long future chapters of this fic will be? Also no. 
> 
> To an extent. 
> 
> To be fair, on Wattpad I am legitimately known for writing long chapters, so.
> 
> Buckle up, kiddies. Settle in for a long haul. I have an increasingly overactive imagination that listens to a lot of dramatic music, access to too much tea, and five cats who I draw an absurd amount of inspiration from (“No, mom, I am not a cat-lady in training,” I say as I croon to and stroke the jet black fur of my youngest son, Mushu). Also, I don’t know what sleep means.
> 
> Please do comment your thoughts on this! I genuinely do live on comments (and tea. I am made up of more tea than water), and I would really appreciate any feedback you guys can give me. I’m new to writing fanfiction, though I’d like to say I six-months crash-coursed my through getting into reading fanfics. Advise, thoughts, feelings, anything you liked (or didn’t like, but ples be gentle I’m a delicate potato) about this chapter is greatly encouraged and appreciated!
> 
> Also, if it looks like my writing style seesaws a lot…it does. My attempts at humour are rudimentary at best.


	2. am i gonna swim (am i gonna sink)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team get a hint of just how powerful Lance can be -and how high a price that power comes at.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: *I'll update this when it reaches 500 hits because I'm still so used to doing this on Wattpad*  
> ~Half a day later~  
> Me:...that was quick
> 
> TW: a little blood (nosebleed), fainting

Lance nods, leg bouncing on the cockpit’s floor in a nervous, jittery tic as he asks, “Where did the others land?”

“Northeast of your current trajectory.” Coran says. “The Castle’s readings show that the Galra on the planet haven’t gotten to the tunnel yet, they’re still disembarking more than a dozen droids from the cruiser, but you’ll have to hurry, Lance. The others left the Lions outside the entrance to the tunnel.”

“Great,” he mumbles. “So it’s like a giant multi-coloured neon arrow pointing the Galra right to the tunnel, gotcha.”

He frowns when the comms in his helmet crackle, but no reply comes through. He taps the button on the inside of his helmet, listening to the crackle fizzle out as he switches the comm off, then on again. Still nothing. He tries the other Paladins’ helmets, Keith’s, Hunk’s, Pidge’s, Shiro’s, but only static greets his efforts.

Dammit.

“Looks like it’s just you and me, girl. Let’s get war ready.”

Blue purrs, trying to comfort the rattled mess of nerves that is Lance McLain. He smiles and sends her a nudge of appreciation before turning his attention to the matter at hand.

It doesn’t take him long to breach Ladene’s atmosphere, heart pounding the whole way as he waits with bated breath for some warnings to flash on his view screens, images of Ladenians, _Beasts,_ demanding to know who he is and why he’s on their planet, their eyes widening and greed and lust and bloodthirsty desire leaking into their eyes when they sense his magic, when they catch the scent of one of their own under his skin, in his _head_ –

Blue growls, as much at the panic brimming inside him like hot water bubbling over a pot reaching boiling point as at him for letting himself get swept under. His hands clench around the joysticks hard enough that imprints are pushed through the thick fabric of his gloves and into his palms. Lance draws in a shaky breath before letting it go in one long, equally quivery exhale as he allows Blue’s chill to flow through him, calming the inferno burning at a relatively low simmer inside him.

Relatively low simmer, _ha_. If Blue weren’t here, it’d be on full blast by now.

“Thanks,” he whispers roughly.

She nudges him again. _Are you ready?_

Is he?

No.

Is he?

For his friends, he has to be. He will be. He did not survive all the utter bullshit his crapfest of a life has been just to let a little fucking _panic_ make him lose his family. _Again._

_Fuck that._

Lance shoves his panic, the whispers of the voices, and his own fear into a dark corner of his mind as he focuses on the task at hand. He follows Coran’s limited directions to northeast of his atmospheric entry point, making sure to keep an eye out for Galra droids and drones and soldiers that may have already branched out from the main unit in their hunt for the Paladins of Voltron.

He sticks to flying close to the ground, a vast, treeless plain where everything is ice, everything is covered in snow and frost, white blanketing everything and reflecting the light of the sun in dangerously bright bursts that would have blinded him if not for Blue’s screen and his own helmet filtering it out. The sight of it all is beautiful, in a cold, barren sort of way, a way that gives him some heavy-grade nostalgia for the swelling tides of his home’s oceans, the warmth of the mid-afternoon sun on his back as he bends to check little Mattie’s securely latched to his new kiddie surfboard.

He finds the entrance to the tunnel in remarkable time. Granted, four colourful and gigantic mechanical Lions sitting motionless (but somehow not, does that make sense? The Lions can be not moving at all, yet you still get the sense that they are, in ways you can’t see, watching you as you watch them) in front of what looks like a cave entrance helps, but still. And if he can find it this easily, the Galra back-up unit can’t be far behind, considering they’re the ones that set up the whole decoy-distress-signal, and the fact that they’re not more than a mile, two at most, away.

Not to mention the Galra already in the tunnel, herding the Paladins and trapping them.

He scrambles out of the cockpit after landing Blue next to Red. He leaps down the rest of the way from Blue’s open jaw and runs headfirst into the dark entrance, pounding down into the depths of the tunnel. He can hear shouts and gun – _no, cannon fire, that’s cannon fire, that’s_ Hunk’s _cannon fire –_ and catches sight of flashes of light from Pidge’s bayard tasing her way through the purple furries in the distance, still too far away. He hears Keith yelling as his sword slices through metal plating of armour, and the fizzle of Shiro’s Galra arm burning through enemy lines as he shouts orders back to the others.

_I shouldn’t have left them alone. I shouldn’t have left them, just like I left Alex, I shouldn’t have left them I shouldn’t have left them Alex I’m sorry guys I’m coming please hang on._

Lance kicks the images of Alex’s broken body lying in a pool of blood at his feet to the back of his mind, and he runs faster than he can remember ever running in his entire life. He curses the impossible length and depth of the tunnel all the way. It’s _ridiculously_ long, and no matter how many times he looks back, all he sees is the tunnel sloping up behind him, which means he’s going _down._ The tunnel, and where the sounds of clashing battle are getting louder, is deep down into the belly of the cave, the dragon. The Beast.

_Stop fucking equating everything to the Beast!_

Lance has fears, many of them, a goddamn _plethora_ of fears, and he has never been so glad before that none of them are about dark, small places where you can’t see more than a few feet ahead without some kind of illumination. Lance runs, ignoring the chills racing up and down his spine at the thought of how perfect this tunnel is to trap someone in, to corner them like animals until there’s nowhere to go and they’re ready to be sliced and diced.

He tries, he tries so hard to ignore the fact that this perfect death-trap sits on a planet full of those exactly like the Beast that is responsible for the black tainting his golden eyes when he uses his magic. For the voices that scream bloody murder in his head if his control over their strength slips. For the blood of his brother that stains his hands red and oily and black.

Lance finally rounds the last corner of the meandering tunnel, and yelps as he ducks low to avoid getting hit in the face with a purple beam of energy that would leaving him a burning, screaming mess. Over the chaos of the large underground cave he’s stumbled into, where a big grey hunk of metal that he assumes is the distress beacon sits in the middle of the ground, no one hears his startled shout, or sees him.

Good. Snipers need cover, need to be hidden, to do their reaper’s work. Even sharpshooters need the fire off of their backs to return the blazing inferno right in the bullseye.

He slinks to the right as quietly as he can, tiptoeing his way behind an outcropping of large rocks that give him just enough legroom between the rocks and the wall of the cave to wiggle around and get his sniper rifle into position.

He does a quick survey of the chaos he’s about to shoot into. There are ten to fifteen Galra soldiers still breathing, a hell of a lot more droids with them. There aren’t many Galra soldiers still uninjured enough to fight, a couple of handful, more lying prone on the dirty, dusty ground with puddles of dark blood growing around them, armours blasted or sliced to bits.

Damn but the Galra brought in a sizeable first unit to bait and draw the Paladins out.

Keith and Hunk are backing each other up, Hunk trying his best to shoot at the dozens of Galra soldiers, blood-and-flesh soldiers surrounding him in the limited space with a big-ass cannon blaster while Keith hacks and slashes his way through both the Galra droids and soldiers, his fluid movements like that of a deadly dance.

“Shiro, duck!” Pidge shouts. A second later there’s an electric cackle and heavy thump, sounds muted over Hunk’s bayard shooting. A droid that was seconds from shooting Shiro in the back drops to the ground, beheaded.

Pidge and Shiro tag-team as they take down more droids and soldiers around them, Pidge leaping around like a flying monkey as she loops her bayard’s razor-sharp wire around robot heads and yanks them clean off, tasing others that are smart enough to avoid having their heads lassoed off. Shiro moves so fast that he’s more of a black-white-purple blur of death on feet as he spins around and hacks droids in half, using his arm as a shield against the three Galra soldiers blasting their gun’s energy beams at him and Pidge.

Lance hefts his bayard and lines his sights with the scope, carefully aiming it in one second, finger pressing the trigger in the second. A sharp grin of satisfaction laced with sour guilt breaks over his face when first one, then another Galra soldier drops dead from a headshot at Keith and Hunk’s feet. He sees Keith spin around on the balls of his feet to identify the new threat, watches his eyes widen as the focus on Lance.

Lance sends him a two-fingered salute before turning his rifle on the three remaining Galra soldiers Shiro and Pidge are fighting. He takes one down, two droids quickly following, as Shiro tackles the other two soldiers while Pidge makes quick work of the remaining droids.

By now the droids have noticed him –not good for him, worse for them, because there’s only three droids left standing at this point. He shoots one through its central processing unit (it’s chest. Headshots are best, hitting the chest isn’t a bad second), and leans back as Shiro cuts the head off of the second, Hunk blasting the last to kingdom come with his cannon.

Just like always, after the flurry of adrenaline and fighting for your life, Lance is almost stunned when the fight ends. Like, what? Where did they go? There’s more, right? There’s more hiding somewhere, right? That can’t be it. That was hard, but it was easy how hard it was. Gotta keep on your toes, Lance, don’t sit still, be ready for the next wave to come and bite you.

But when nothing happens in the next five seconds of disbelief, Lance allows himself to loosen, just a bit, just a tad, enough not to feel like he’s a bowstring drawn taut, ready to snap forward and send the arrow of death flying.

For a long second the Paladins just _breathe,_ trying to catch their gasping breath from the exertion of fighting in such tight, close quarters, penned in like animals with no discernible way out. Lance leans back against the cave wall, fingers cramping over his bayard’s trigger but unwilling to let go of it with the adrenaline still pumping through his veins like sweet venom.

Sweat beads his forehead; he’s equally out of breath as them. Sure, he ran a lot, but he ran track in high school before the Garrison. He didn’t really fight as much as the others did. He mostly just sat and aimed and shot **_:because you’re the most useless why would you need to do more:._**

No, that’s not why he’s out of breath.

Trying to reign in his magical aura, to dull it to mimic that of the limited type regular humans have, and trying to keep the voices screeching at the back of his mind in check without the aid of his pendant, is _draining._ He never realized just how much the pendant has helped him in all these years until he had to take it off.

 _In, out, simple,_ he chants to himself, trying to calm down, to ground himself in the mantra. _In, out, simple, and get the damn thing back on your neck._

Like a noose. A very comfortable noose that Lance doesn’t mind tightened around his neck at all. He _needs_ it.

The fact that reaching out for Blue to ask for help and finding a distinct lack of her cooling presence, something he hadn’t noticed before in all the rush, doesn’t help. That disturbs him more than he can say, sends a wave of goosebumps rising up over his skin. Allura said that she couldn’t sense the Lions, and that the Castle couldn’t reach their communications system, but he had no idea that the scope of whatever’s jamming their signal would affect that Paladins’ connection to the Lions.

What the hell have the Galra got up their sleeve?

Lance rises to his feet unsteadily, gritting his teeth as he blinks the brief bout of dizziness away. He deactivates his bayard a second later so that transforms to its normal, non-lethal form; he really doesn’t want to get trigger happy and blow his foot off. The one thing that would be nice to have on the sniper rifle is a safety catch, but of course, because Lance can’t have nice things, there’s no such thing on it.

(He wonders if that’s supposed to be some metaphor or bad joke on his life, considering the bayard takes the form that most suits its wielder. What does it say about him that it has no safety?)

As he does so, he searches for the door in his mind, pushes the voices back as much as he can. It’s enough, for now, but he can’t quite turn the lock on the door, not quite enough to keep the voices from making him think that Shiro’s looking at him in irritation for not being here in the first place. That Pidge is looking at him like his stupid ass wasn’t needed in the first place. That Hunk is looking at him in disappointment for making it so late. That Keith is looking at him in anger for showing up and stealing his glory.

He shakes his head. No, no. Shiro looks surprised, but relieved. Pidge is tired, but grinning at their narrow victory. Hunk looks concerned, but smiling because Lance did make it, like he promised he would. Keith…is frowning, as per usual, but it’s not angry. He looks more confused, than anything else. Damn his poker face. Even after a close-call like that, he’s still got that semi-blank look on. Lance now knows how Keith’s managed to keep Pidge from taking all his money in poker.

(Lance is flat-out broke at this point. Want him to buy the cheapest thing in the universe? Sorry, but he’s already in debt to the others, and Coran –Allura’s scary, he’s not borrowing money from her, she’ll turn into a loan shark if he’s not careful.)

“Lance,” Shiro smiles at him, _smiles,_ as they all shamble (after the tension of that fight they’re allowed to drag their feet a bit) to the rocks Lance stands beside, close to the entrance (let’s make it an exit) of the cave _._ “Thanks for coming. We really needed the help.”

Hunk comes over in half a second flat and scoops Lance up in a hug that lifts Lance, laughing, off his feet for a moment before setting him back down. “Yeah, buddy, glad you could make it.”

Lance grins at him, praying no one notices the faint twitch at the corner of his lips, a tell Allie pointed out to him that shows his smile is fake as hell. “Of course I came! Who else was gonna save your asses?”

Pidge snorts. “Whatever.” She puts her hands on her hips and peers up at him. “Are you okay?”

Lance blinks at her in total stupefaction for a good five seconds. Did…did she just ask him if he’s okay? _Pidge?_ Pidge only ever says those words to her beloved cornucopia of laptops and tablets and assorted techie junk when Lance accidentally stumbles into them when he makes the dangerous quest of traversing the chaotic landscape of her workroom to take her to bed/force her to go to sleep.

(He’s pretty sure one of those tablets talked back, one time. He’s convinced Pidge is trying to build her own AI.)

“Uh,” he glances around nervously, not meeting any of their eyes as he shuffles back a step. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m fine.”

_Just fending off another fucking panic attack by the skin of my teeth because I’m literally probably in the belly of the Beast, no biggie._

No one is convinced by the quite blatant lie.

“Let’s just get out of here, yeah?” he asks, voice trembling just a little as he gestures at the exit of the cave. Then he remembers the battlecruiser not far enough from the cave, and the nauseating coiling thing his stomach likes to do when filled with nerves triples. “There’s a Galra cruiser a mile or so out from here. It won’t take them long to get here.”

“That was their plan all along,” Pidge mutters darkly, gripping her bayard’s handle tight. “The distress signal was bait. As soon as we got here and deactivated it, our comm’s line with the Castle cut off and those guys,” she jerks her chin in the direction of the floor littered with metallic droid bodies and hulking tall Galra bodies. “Swarmed us.”

Hunk lifts his hand to his helmet and tries his comms, but nothing. “I still can’t contact the Castle. Whatever they’re using to jam us, we’re still within range of it. I can’t even reach Yellow.” He looks incredibly worried about this, fidgeting with the tips of his gloves nervously. The others briefly close their eyes, reaching for their helmets, then open them, shaking their heads.

Good to know Lance isn’t the only one who can’t reach his Lion. Well, not _good,_ but strength in numbers, right?

Shiro’s face hardens back to one of a leader intent on getting his crew to safety. “Lance, you and I will take the front and keep an eye out for those reinforcements. Pidge, stick to the middle. Keith and Hunk will take the rear-guard –we don’t know what else is in these tunnels.”

But Jesus does that single statement do absolute fucking _wonders_ for his mental state already frazzled enough that he just wants to get his sniper rifle back up under his shoulder and shoot anything that _moves._ He half-wishes Shiro didn’t say that, because that just reminds him of the fact that he’s in a fucking death-trap on a planet full of Beasts just like the one back home, just like the one that forced his people into a war no one wanted, just like the one that killed his cousin and murdered his brother and drove him into hearing voices in his head that want him dead –

“Lance?” Shiro says as they get into position and start forward. He’s whispering, because why not. They really don’t know what’s in these caves. “Are you sure you’re all right? I mean, really. You were –”

Lance tunes out then when he hears a click. A very specific kind of click. Not the click of a rock falling from the ceiling and bouncing on the floor. Not the click of their armours plating moving against each other as they all fall into a semi-crouch, ready to spring back into action at a moment’s notice.

This click sounds like his sniper rifle’s trigger a second before the sound of the laser-beam within shooting out. This sounds like that little catch Hunk’s cannon lets out as he pulls it back and readies it for another shot.

This click sounds like a weapon.

Lance glances back behind them, because the sound comes from there, somewhere behind Keith and Hunk. The group hasn’t moved that far from the entrance of the cave, just passing over the mouth on their way out. His eyes widen as he catches sight of a tall, lone figure kneeling in the middle of the room, propping itself up with one arm braced against the rock from which the deactivated distress signal sits.

It’s not a droid.

It’s a Galra soldier. In his hands is a human hand-sized, acorn-shaped piece of metal with strips of glowing purple leading up to its nozzle, a hooked ring-pin sticking out of the top. The soldier lifts the weird thing up, pulling the pin out and letting it fall with a second _click!_ to the ground. The purple lines on the metal start pulsing, lights growing stronger before dimming, on and off, a steady beat of its destructive heart.

When the Galra sees him staring, his lips pull up in a vicious snarl, elongated canines pressing in to his bleeding lips. “Vrepit sa.”

Lance feels his breath stop in his chest when he sees exactly what it is in his hand. The Galra is holding a grenade. A space grenade. A Galran manufactured _space grenade._

And he’s aiming it to throw at Keith’s turned, unsuspecting back.

Shit.

There are so many reasons why he shouldn’t do what he does next, but he does it anyway, throwing caution to the wind. He throws his bayard and it clatters to the ground. He doesn’t think as he blinks to Keith’s side, shoving him as hard as he can as the Galra launches the grenade at them. Keith yelps in surprise as he falls, just barely being caught by Hunk standing beside him.

“Lance what the fuck –”

Lance takes half a step forward, raising his hands and holding them palms outward as the grenade hurtles through the air toward them, spinning end over end. He releases the band of control over his magic and it _explodes_ out of him, an unseen force. He barely has time to mould it into the shape he needs it to be, an invisible shield that touches the lip of the cave walls and covers it completely, before the grenade hits the shield.

He closes his eyes to protect against the burst of light of the explosion that would burn his retinas right out. He feels it, the grenade going off. Feels it like it’s detonating in his bones. He feels it in the violent tremor of his arms as he fights with everything he has to keep the shield up. He feels it in the step he stumbles back from the force of the explosion as it bursts out on the other side of the shield.

He feels it in the sudden heat fanning his face, yellow and red and blue and orange tongues licking up the invisible shield, seeking out any weakness, any hole to leak through and burn them all. He feels the heat in his veins, boiling his blood, sweat dripping down his face as he scrounges up every bit of magic in him and shoves it into the shield, fortifying it.

Spots of black, disturbingly large, flower in the edges of his vision. Nausea rolls in his stomach, dipping, plunging, leaving behind an aching pit of emptiness inside him. He’s shaking from head to foot like a leaf in a winter storm, a blizzard, a hurricane of hale that will cut him up and crush him.

He can’t keep this up –he’s not at full capacity yet, he doesn’t have enough magic to keep the shield up for however long it will take the fire to burn out on its own. He needs to cut it off, at its source, or he’ll be the one burning out before the fire does.

What feeds fire?

Air.

They’re in a cave. There’s not much air to begin with.

He grits his teeth and forces the magic to obey. He curves his hands, mimicking what he wants the magic to do. He feels the shield bend, twist, following the movements of his hands, scratching against the walls of the cave as it pushes inward. He feels the impossible heat of the fire scorching his hands. He pushes his hands down harder on the shield, drives it down and around the fire, collecting it, packing it into a ball of flame that’s strength wanes with every second it is deprived of the air it needs to dance and rage with.

The palms of his hands sting when he claps them together, and there’s a reverberating _boom!_ that ricochets around the walls like a bullet _,_ a thunder with no sound that rocks through the cave’s floor as the shield slaps and smashes the fire into nothing. The silence that follows is numbing, deafening, crippling. If his ears weren’t ringing with the sound of blood rushing through his head, he thinks he’d be able to hear the tiniest needle drop in a bed of sand.

Lance falls to his knees, legs turning to jelly, arms limp at his sides as he struggles to keep his eyes open. Blackness engulfs his sight, and he feels his body list to the side. Before he can brace himself for the impact of hitting the ground, strong arms come up around him, holding him up against something –no, not something. A body.

Someone’s holding him up. Someone’s…calling his name?

“Lance? Lance, come on, wake up,” a gloved hand gently taps at his cheek. Shouldn’t his visor be there? “Don’t fall asleep in the worst place now.”

He groans, turning his face away from the hand, into whatever hard surface his pressed up against. It’s smooth, and cooler than his entire body feels. Is it armour? Whose armour? Where’s his helmet?

“Is he awake?” that must be Hunk. That anxious, worried tone can only be his. “Is he still awake?”

“I think so.” That’s Shiro for sure, steady and sure, maintaining control. “Lance? Can you hear me?”

“Lance, c’mon,” okay, that is for sure Keith. But he’s heard that distressed, almost _terrified_ tone in his voice before. “Open your damn eyes, you bird-brained idiot, _come on_.”

Yes. Yes, that is the mullet. Man of helpful words to magically exhausted friends.

“Lance?” that one, so small, so awed, so scared…that’s Pidge, right? “Lance, please wake up, please, _please.”_

He can’t say no to that many ‘please’s, no matter how much he just wants to sink into the peacefulness of oblivion. It takes a lot of swimming in that darkness, a lot of kicking and thrashing, before he feels some semblance of cognizance return to him.

“That’s not the way I want you to say my name,” he mutters, cracking his eyes open to peer up at his teammates.

Pidge is kneeling next to him, holding his still tingling and gloved hand in one of her small hands while his helmet sits beside her. Her pupils blown wide in her eyes until the amber irises are just a line around the black. Hunk is right next to her, biting his lip, visor up and tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. Shiro````` stands just behind them, leaning down, the scar over his nose wrinkling a bit as he frowns with such concern on his face that Lance would choke up with emotion at that, if his throat didn’t feel burned raw.

He realizes that it’s Keith holding him up, Keith whose body he’s sagging heavily against, Keith whose arms caught him when he would have face planted with the cave’s floor. Something akin to a very light blush dusts his cheeks, and he thanks his lucky stars that his skin is dark enough no one will see (question) it.

Hunk lets out a sob of relief when Lance opens his eyes, but thankfully, he wisely sees that the present situation is not one where he can hug the living daylights out of Lance, especially considering said lights are very dim at the moment. Pidge heaves a huge sigh of relief, and the look of respite on Shiro’s face doesn’t quite dispel the tension lining his strong shoulders, but it does make Lance wish that relief could be more often there.

He can’t quite see the look on Keith’s face considering his face is behind Lance, but Lance doesn’t exactly miss the miniscule tightening of Keith’s arms around his middle. He makes no comment.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” Pidge breathes, glancing back to the cave. Lance follows her line of sight to see the blackened walls of the cave, and charred remains of the once blood-and-flesh Galra soldiers sizzling beside melted droids. Bile coats the back of his throat at the sight. She turns back to him, eyes wide. “You just saved our lives. Like that. That was _incredible.”_

Lance smiles faintly at her. “Obviously when I go big, I go _big.”_

She rolls her eyes and sends him a watery smile in return. Behind him (and under him, considering half his body is on top of him), Keith huffs. Lance’s not quite sure if it’s a laugh-huff or a snort-huff. Could be both, when it comes to Keith.

“Are you good to stand?” Shiro asks. “I’m sure you need to rest after that, but we have to get out of here first.”

He certain he’s not certain that he can walk all that way out, much less run, but he’ll be damned if he won’t try. Pursing his lips, he nods. He fits his helmet back on, and Keith helps him most of the way, bracing his hands under Lance’s arms and letting him use Keith to get up, the others standing close in case Lance falls or so much as stumbles. He nods at Keith to let him go, and Keith hesitates for a moment before stepping back, hands up and ready to catch Lance if need be.

Lance shakily stands on his own for a few seconds, gritting his teeth and forcing himself to keep steady. He can manage this much, at least, but…“Anyone interested in being my personal crutch?” he asks, voice quivering.

Before Hunk can even step forward, like he’s literally one second away from doing, Keith puts Lance’s arm over his shoulder as he loops his own arm around Lance’s waist. He tugs Lance closer (Lance has never been more grateful to have such tan skin that so perfectly hides his blush), then looks to Shiro. “Lead the way.”

Shiro nods, rallying Keith and Lance to the middle, Hunk taking up the rear-guard this time after picking up Lance’s bayard, while Shiro and Pidge are at the front to make sure their way is clear as they start forward. Pidge and Shiro plot out the fastest route through the quick navigation probe Pidge sends out with her armour’s gauntlet, while Hunk reminds them to steer clear of that tunnel that branches off to their right that they almost got lost in when they got here.

Lance clenches his jaw and does his best to pick up his pace, knowing he’s making everyone slow down because he can’t quite keep up. His breath shoots out of him in harsh pants, perspiration beading at his forehead, arms shaking just from trying to keep from sliding down to the ground and just lying there like a ragdoll. His legs are like tree trunks, more interested in planting roots in individual spots on the floor rather than quickly making their way across the floor.

“Breathe,” Keith murmurs softly. Lance glances at him to see Keith watching him closely. “Breathe, Lance. If we need to stop and take a break, we will.”

Lance scowls. “There’s an entire mini army of Galra soldiers and droids ten minutes out, tops. There’s no times for breaks.”

But he needs one. Gods, he _needs_ one. His ribs feel like they’re pressing in on his lungs, and his whole body weighs so heavy. His tendons feel stretched to absolute limit, muscles cramping with every miniscule move as he fights to keep himself upright as much as he can on his own, not wanting to lean too heavily on Keith, even though he knows Keith can very well hold his weight.

(You’ll have to pull his teeth out before he admits just how many times he’s watched Keith train from the observation deck).

“We’ll fight our way out if we have to.” Keith answers bluntly. “Just don’t wear yourself out.”

Lance gives him a flat look. “Buddy, I’m not doing any more fighting. I can’t –I can barely walk as it is.”

Keith realizes what he’s thinking a second before Lance says it out loud. His eyes harden to amethyst flecks of anger. “No.”

“Keith –”

 _“No.”_ He repeats, sharper this time, loud enough for Shiro and Pidge to turn back in confusion.

“No what?” Hunk asks, coming up behind them.

“We don’t have time to waste on bickering, guys,” Shiro says, giving the two a warning look.

Keith glowers at Lance before saying, “He wants us to leave him behind.”

Even Lance winces at the harsh wording. But, in essence, yes, that’s what he wants. Well, not _wants,_ who the hell’s crazy enough to want to be left behind at the hands of the enemy? But it’s really the only option left at this point. He can barely walk, he’s pretty sure he’ll faint before they reach the end of the tunnel, and even if he doesn’t he’s still dragging them, _slowing_ them down. At this rate, the Galra will get to them before they even reach the halfway point of the tunnel.

“Lance?” Hunks asks, looking at Lance like he’s giving him the benefit of the doubt, giving him the chance to deny it. Lance looks away, unable to look him in the eye. Hunk has a way of making him feel like he’s giving up, like he’s giving in to the pressure, just by looking at him.

But he’s _not,_ okay? He’s just –he’s just thinking logically. He’ll find a way out; he just needs to make sure everyone gets out first. And even if the Galra do get him, it **_:won’t matter because he’s expendable he’s not as important:_** as they are.

Shiro shakes his head immediately, predictably. “We’re not leaving anyone behind.”

“Shiro, I’m –”

Pidge cuts him off before he can finish. _“Hell_ no.”

He sighs, braces himself, and takes his arm back from around Keith’s shoulders and pushes himself back to brace himself against the wall. Just that move alone has him trying to catch his breath before he manages to speak.

“Guys, think about it. We’re barely making good pace right now, and I can’t go any faster than this. There’s a Galra cruiser waiting outside, and back-up for those guys back there,” he feebly jerks a thumb back from where they left the coaled remains of the droids and soldiers. “Are maybe already in the tunnel. Even if they’re not, we’re going to meet them before we get to our Lions, and I can’t –I can’t fight anymore.”

He warbles a bit to the end, but before he can continue, Pidge stomps over to him, and despite having to look up at him, Lance almost wants to shrink away from the blazing _anger_ in her eyes.

“Lance, I said _no.”_ She growls. “We are not leaving you behind. I’m not –I _will not_ lose another brother. So you shut up with your self-sacrificing bullshit, and if you say another word about it, I will gut you, and you will be _dragging_ your intestines behind you back to the damn Castle by the time I’m done with you.”

Lance is stunned into silence by the vivid imagery (he’s a little scared she actually means it), a confusing mix of emotions swirling in him. Pidge sees him as a brother. She sees him as a brother, and she doesn’t want to lose him. That…that makes him feel good, wanted, _needed._

Then he remembers that he left Allie, alone. He left his family, alone, and they probably think he’s dead, and they’re all probably doing just fine without him. He was just a burden to them, bringing with him unwanted problems and stress and worries and fear for their safety because of what hunts him.

Just like he’s being a burden here. Just like he’s being a problem here. Just like he’s jeopardizing his team’s safety here. But at least here he can actually _do_ something about it.

Slowly, hesitantly, he nods. Pidge glares at him, as if waiting for the other shoe to drop and for him to continue arguing his moot (to her) point, before spinning around and stalking back to Shiro’s side, where she brings up the holographic map on her gauntlet and continues trying to map out the fastest way out. Hunk gives Lance a long look, but Lance doesn’t meet his eye as Hunk goes to stand behind them, taking up guard.

Keith doesn’t say anything, face expertly closed off despite the fire raging in his eyes, fire that promises words will be said at a later point. He steps forward and winds his arm around Lance’s waist again as Lance hooks his own over Keith’s shoulder. Tension lines Keith’s whole body, a different kind to the one from before, the post-battle one. Lance says nothing about it. They move forward again, as a team, still so slow, but still as a team.

Lance won’t let their adamant refusal to see logic blind them enough that it becomes their downfall. If the Galra get here before they reach their Lions, it only makes sense that only one of them goes down or gets taken, rather than all five of them, including the Lions.

Like King Lykonark said, back on Xyphelia. They aren’t just individual people anymore. Together, they make up Voltron, the legendary defender needed to fight against the tyrannical Zarkon. There are billions, maybe even _trillions,_ of lives that depend on them. He knows that he’s part of that ‘together’, but he’s the seventh wheel. The expendable one. They can easily replace him with someone better.

If anyone’s going to go down, better that it’s him, and not anyone else.

The next few minutes of walk is significantly more subdued, everyone glancing at Lance every so often as if they expect him to suddenly drop dead at their feet. Either that, or the looks are wary in the way that they’re wondering if they should cuff him to one of them so he doesn’t try to blink away from them.

The thing is, blinking isn’t the only vanishing act he can pull. Blinking, now that he can only do for himself. That’s an individualistic Witch ability. He can’t make other people blink from one spot to the other.

Teleporting?

That’s a whole other thing altogether.

Lance glances up the steady incline of the path they’re following out of the tunnel. When he’s sure that there’s nothing that’ll trip him, he closes his eyes so he’s not distracted and focuses deep inside himself. He searches out the power, feels it move sluggishly in response to his probing touch. There’s not much left of it, just enough to slowly heal up without burning him out, and possibly teleport himself, maybe one other person.

He wonders if it’ll be a good or bad thing if he kills himself pulling this off. But if he gets captured by the Galra, better to be found dead than alive, right? If the Galra forced Shiro into fighting in the arena for his life and took his arm for experimentation, all _before_ he became the Black Paladin, he can’t imagine what they’d do to him, a Paladin of Voltron.

 ** _:the expendable replaceable one:_** but still a Paladin.

He’s making himself sick, bile rising at the back of his throat, just thinking about it. He’s pretty sure he’s seconds away from puking his guts out just thinking about little Pidge, or gentle Hunk, or caring Shiro, or brazen and reckless Keith, being tortured for information. Better him than them.

Always better him than them. In every reality.

He shakes off those distracting thoughts and focuses on what he wants from what little power he still has. He thinks of where he last saw the Lions, standing around the entrance of the cave that the tunnel leads up to. He thinks about Blue, how he can’t feel her, how he hopes she’ll be okay, how he hopes she’ll forgive him for doing this if he makes it out. If he doesn’t, well, she’ll be better off with a more trained Paladin than him. He digs deeper. For this to work, for them all to be safe, he needs her help.

Then, there.

Just barely, he feels her, stirring, knocking on the invisible wall that separates her from her cub.

He calls to her, and she growls, fury lashing her tail like an angry big cat. He feels claws rake against something in his mind, some kind of shield he didn’t even know was there. The claws skitter over its surface, and again, she slashes at it, again and again until there’s enough jagged tears in it that Blue’s concern and worry washes over him like a torrential downpour of a never-ending storm.

He almost sags in relief at her gentle touch, her crooning at him as she curls protectively around his mind, chasing away the voices back behind their locked door. He hadn’t even realized they’d gotten so close. If he’s already this unaware, then he definitely needs Blue to do this. He doesn’t know what he’d have had to do if he couldn’t reach her.

He’d probably have needed to use some of what is in his magical reserves and that…okay, Lance is risking his skin here, and there’s a ninety-eight percent chance he won’t make it out of this alive, but he doesn’t _actually_ have a death with, okay? He’s not suicidal. He doesn’t want to die.

The thing is, Witches don’t dip into their magical reserves. They just don’t. The magic in there is just that –it’s a reserve, a stockpile of magic that builds up right next to a Witch’s _soul_ from the moment their born, accumulating inch by inch ever year until the day they die. Magical reserves are what make Witches _Witches._ Magical reserves are separate from the power Witches regularly use.

It’s like there’re two batteries in a Witch. One battery is eternally rechargeable, the one Witches use all the time. You can completely burn through it, and it will recharge to full power given enough time. Then there's a second battery, the main battery, the core. Once you run through the magic in the second battery, that's it. It doesn't recharge, and you're done.

Tapping into your magical reserve means you’re desperate, fucking desperate.

If you use it, even just a little bit, you can never replace what you’ve taken out. That hole where that little bit of magic used to be in the bottle that holds your soul will never fill up again, no matter how much magic you pour into it to try and replace it. And once a Witch’s magical reserve is depleted, that’s it.

The end.

Game over.

Kaput.

Dead shot.

Check mate.

Knife in the chest, straight through the heart.

You’re a goner.

That’s what makes his cousin’s death when he was eleven so horrible. She didn’t just _die;_ she was drained. Not of her blood, but of every bit of her magic, both regular and reserve. And the thing that did it? The thing that ritually slaughtered her and magically drained her?

It was the Beast. And now he’s on a planet inhabited by aliens that are identical to the Beast

Reason number eighty million, seven hundred and forty-two thousand, nine hundred and eighty-three of why he didn’t want to come down to this planet.

So when Lance feels Blue’s presence engulf him, almost smother him with her love, he wants to cry. Because what he’s about to ask her might break her big mechanical heart, and he doesn’t want to hurt his girl. But more than that, he doesn’t want her captured. He doesn’t want her sisters captured. He doesn’t want his friends captured.

Breaking her heart is the lesser of two evils. No less hurtful, but still the lesser.

Blue doesn’t need to search very hard, nor does he need to push it very hard to her, for her to sense his plan as she floods through his mind with her presence, almost giving him a brain freeze with how hard and fast she flows over him in her relief to find him alive and safe (relatively).

She recoils once the full scope of what his plan is hits her, and Lance rushes to explain it to her. He feels her rejecting it, throwing it back in his face, growling in pained fury at him, because why, _Why, cub, why would you do this to me?_

 _I’m sorry, nina, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,_ he pleads, infusing every bit of his desperation in his mental words to her. _But please, Blue. Voltron is bigger than me._ You’re _bigger than me. You need to stay out of Galra hands._

 _So do you,_ she snarls, tail whipping back and forth behind her. _You are my Paladin. I will never choose another._

 _Blue, please,_ he begs. _I can’t let anything happen to them, to_ you. _I won’t survive it –please, please, I need your help._

 _Why can’t you come?_ She argues. _Why must you stay?_

 _It’s too much. Even with your help, I won’t make it._ To move himself, he’ll have to use his own power, tap into his magical reserve, and the distance he wants to send everyone is too far. He’ll drain out his reserve before he even gets there.

It takes too long to wheedle her into agreeing, and even then, he’s half-worried the hesitation broiling beneath the depths of her rankled concern will make her change her mind at the last minute (which will be disastrous for everyone involved). But he can’t do any more about it. It has to be done now.

Lance peeks one eye open to make sure the others are still focused on their duties, and not on him. They are. Pidge is gesturing at something on her hologram while Shiro nods tersely before turning the group down a tunnel branching off to their left. Hunk’s looking right to left nervously, up and down, as if he expects shadows to melt from the walls and morph into Galra for them to fight. Keith’s staring dead ahead with a terrifying intensity that has Lance knowing the Red Paladin’s trying incredibly hard to reign in his temper and keep his words leashed, for now.

He closes his eyes again, ignoring the ache in his heart over what he’s about to do. He closes his eyes, and this time he doesn’t look inside himself. He reaches for Blue, and she reaches back, the raw energy of her striking blue quintessence touching him like a bolt of lightning coursing through his body. He clenches his jaw to keep from yelping in surprise, and Blue retracts a little, sending a nudge of apology.

He shakes his head lightly, reassuring her that he’s okay. She’s more cautious this time as she lends him the strength he needs in the form of her quintessence, and he breathes deeper, slower, to better filter the raw power into being housed in his body for the short time he needs it. Once it’s safely there, nestled where he imagines the centre of his soul to be, he thinks of where he wants to see his friends.

 

Hunk, in Yellow, safe, in the Castle.

Pidge, in Green, safe, in the Castle.

Shiro, in Black, safe, in the Castle.

Keith, in Red, safe, in the Castle.

Blue, safe, in the Castle.

 

Shiro lifts his hand, silently calling them to a halt as he strains to hear, frowning. “Get ready. They’re coming.”

They are. Lance can feel it, a reverberation in the ground, the sound of clanking armour and stamping feet getting closer and closer.

“Lance?” Keith asks.

Lance sluggishly peels his eyes open, and when he turns to look at Keith, he feels something warm, _wet,_ drip from his nose down to his upper lip.

Keith’s eyes widen at the sight of the blood dribbling from Lance’s nose. He carefully leans Lance up against the wall, one hand on Lance’s shoulder while the other is at his hip. “Lance, why are you bleeding?”

Lance smiles at him. It’s a sad smile, a smile that says, _I wish I could say more, I wish I did say more, I wish you would say it back._ It’s a sad smile, a smile that says, _I’m sorry._

He parts his lips, and his voice comes out weak, but he’s close enough to Keith, so close, that his words are heard. “Take care of yourself, will ya?”

Keith blinks. Stares. Frowns. “What are you –”

He doesn’t get any more out before an awful tugging sensation practically _yanks_ Lance’s stomach up and up to his throat. He gags as he shoves himself away from Keith, whose eyes widen as he reaches for Lance, to catch him before he can fall.

He doesn’t get the chance. Between one blink and the next, one mind-numbing, skull-crushing, body-ripping moment later, Keith winks out of sight.

Then Hunk, who stares at the spot Keith was just in with utter confusion scrawled over his face.

Then Pidge, who’s a sentence away from demanding what’s wrong, where the hell Keith and Hunk disappeared to.

Then Shiro, who has just enough time to turn around and gape at Lance, maybe realizing what’s happening, before he vanishes from sight in a split-second.

Then Lance is alone.

Not a moment too soon, either, because before he knows it, he sees a shifting mass of hulking purple shadows and stomping armoured feet pounding their way to him. He leans back against the wall, gripping his bayard tight in his hand as it shifts into his trusty sniper rifle. He lifts it up, lining his sights, and shoots down the first three Galra that come within range.

A second before the third body drops and a purple beam hits the wall right above his head, he hears static crackle in his helmet, and then his team’s voices fill his ears.

“What the hell just happened?” Pidge screeches, and he winces at the volume as he takes down another Galra. “How the fuck did we get here? Where’s Lance?”

Hunk is breathing fast, voice shaking, and oh no, Lance should be there, Hunk’s about to fall headfirst into an anxiety attack and Lance is the only one who knows how to get him out of one. “Oh my god, oh my god, we’re in the Castle, we’re in the Castle, why are we here whyareweherewheresLancewheresLance _where’s Lance?”_

“Paladins?” he hears, vaguely, through someone else’s helmet. It’s Allura. Good. They’re on the bridge, safely in the Castle, the Lions in their places in their hangars. “What –how did you get here?”

He grits his teeth, breathing laboured as he shoots down one more Galra. The rest hang back a little, not quite storming over to him like before, a little warier now that they know he’s armed and quite willing to decorate their purple foreheads with red flowers.

“Shit,” Shiro swears, holy fuck, Shiro just swore. Pidge, get the swear jar ready. “Is he still back there? Did he just –did he just _teleport_ us here?”

And then the Galra _surge_ forward, too many, too fast for him to take out more than three more soldiers before they’re on him. One lifts the end of its blaster up and brings it down on his head, but not fast enough for him not to hear Keith’s broken cry of, “Lance, _no!”_

The world is swallowed in black, and his final thought is, _Did I really think this would be in, out, simple?_

↭§↭

In the distance, amongst the glimmering stars, an Altean white castle-ship manoeuvres its way out of reach of the fleet of Galra ships chasing and shooting at it, particle barrier flickering dangerously as it attempts to hold up for a few precious more seconds. A blue-white wormhole opens up and the Castle hurtles through it, the wormhole quickly closing up behind it to prevent the Galra fighters from following and doing more damage.

As the Paladins of Voltron are left reeling at the loss of one of their own being so suddenly and ruthlessly torn from their grip, a blue lion keens at the loss of her cub.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I binge-wrote this in two hours lol
> 
> Here's my social media if you wanna scream at/with me about Voltron or just to talk!
> 
> [Wattpad](https://www.wattpad.com/user/azurehyn) || [Tumblr](https://www.azurehyn.tumblr.com)


	3. if i look hard enough (into the setting sun)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance's defiance costs him, and the team (Keith) aren't dealing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *says I'll try to update every one to two weeks*
> 
> *updates three times in one week*
> 
> Next chapter will also come out pretty quick, I've got most of it written up already. This chapter was actually part of the next one, but when the whole thing got to 11k and counting, I decided to split it.
> 
> TW: electrocution

Sleeping (or being knocked unconscious, still in the dark either way) is overrated. No one ever talks about how _terrible_ it is to wake up. That might have something to do with the fact that most people wake up in their beds, or at least the last place they remembered lying down. But that’s beside the point.

See, Lance, he doesn’t sleep much to begin with. Sleep for him is a very unfairly tricky business. When he’s asleep, it’s easier for the voices to sneak through the door he locks them behind, easier for them to try and whisper false truths to him, to trick him into letting them in all the way. His attention goes lax when he sleeps, which he gets is the _point_ of sleeping, but that’s not a good thing for him, ever, in any situation. Even if he manages to fall asleep and keep a lid on the voices, sometimes (translation; always) his powers will act up and he’ll find himself either floating in front of his bedroom door, or buried under a pile of snow.

(Disney _lies_ if they think they can convince him that sleeping in a castle of ice with absolutely no thermal regulation whatsoever is _comfortable._ )

And if it’s not his powers, well, nightmares like to line up for a front row seat in tormenting Lance’s psyche with things he’d rather pretend never happened, or completely delete their existence from his brain. He’s fan-fucking-tastic at avoiding anything he doesn’t want to deal with, and those nightmares make it damn hard to avoid those things when they have him jerking awake in the middle of the night, covered in sweat and trying to breathe around the ball of tears hovering in his throat.

So Lance tries not to sleep, when he can, and he’s pretty good at it, too. When he has to, he’ll snatch a nap here or there, maybe curl up in Blue’s cockpit and sleep for a little longer than that, where she helps to keep the voices at bay. Once or twice he fell asleep cuddled against Hunk’s side while everyone was chilling in the common room. It was the most peaceful nap he could remember ever having.

(It was ruined by Pidge deciding his stomach as the perfect place to attempt a bungee jump. Luckily, he stirred to wakefulness just quickly enough to blink away before she could. Pidge has been on a mission to catch him unawares and before he can blink out of sight ever since.)

His magic, despite its annoying traits, keeps him invigorated enough that he doesn’t need quite so much sleep as the average mundane human. Eight hours recommended sleep for him is more of four, though that’s not to say he wouldn’t appreciate the extra four hours.

Still, for what it’s worth, Lance would have appreciated it if he woke up with his nose not inches away from a puddle of vomit that looks a sickly shade of green overshadowed by the purple ambience of the low lights lining the ceiling, on cold, hard ground, with his hands secured behind his back in some kind of clinking chains that feel weirdly hot, and a headache to rival all headaches pounding away at the base of his skull.

Not to mention how utterly _exhausted_ he is, despite just rising to consciousness after being ‘asleep’ for who knows how long. This, now this he knows is because of his magic. He doesn’t even need to reach for it to feel the empty, gaping hole in his chest that is where his magic is supposed to sit filled to the brim. It’s almost all gone now, completely drained. The only magic left in him is what’s in his reserve, and he’s not touching that.

He wrinkles his nose in distaste at the putrid smell and groans, rolling away from the vomit. Still too weak to fully sit up, he comes up flush against a wall, almost smacking his nose against it. He wriggles around futilely for a moment, trying to free his hands, before he gives up and sags like a limp rag doll. He presses his forehead to against the wall, sighing from the slight relief the coolness of it gives his burning skin. His brain feels like it’s melting in his skull, turning to gooey soup.

He probably has a fever –great.

If he had his magic, he could probably speed up his healing process. But of course, he burned through it all. And either way, he couldn’t heal his magic-induced fatigue even if he wanted to –the thing about magic is that you can’t cure magical injuries you inflict on yourself with that same magic.

He knows Allie once tried to explain it to him (before he fell asleep on her, only to be rudely awoken by her shoving her foot in his face), something about the similar quality of the magic and the injury cancelling each other out and doing nothing if the magic that did the injuring is the same as the magic trying to do the healing. If it’s another magic user doing the healing on you, fine, that’s works perfectly well. Otherwise? Not so much.

Sometimes, magic and its rules really, really suck.

For a while, he stays right where he is, trying to gather his scattered wits about him, listening to the sounds around him. There isn’t much to begin with; whatever room or cell he’s in, it’s soundproofed. The only sound is that of his breath puffing against the wall, absurdly loud to his ears. When he feels like he’s up to it, he draws every bit of strength he can and rolls back around so that he’s facing the door, then braces his hands against the wall to help push himself up to a sitting position.

He sits with his legs stretched out, carefully avoiding the vomit, catching his breath after the exertion of just sitting up, something he finds comically sad, for some reason. He dry swallows a couple of times, smacking his chapped lips and cursing his terrible luck that he doesn’t even have enough magic to pool just a little water in his hands for his parched throat.

The reminder of his lack of magic has him reaching out for Blue, finally noticing the distinct lack of her cool presence in the back of his mind, curling around him the way she likes to. His lip trembles at how _empty_ he feels, how lost and alone he is without her comforting presence there to keep his spirits up even when they’re down in the dumps. Clearly, however the Galra messed with the Paladins’ bond to their Lions on Ladene is working at full-force here.

Maybe while he’s here, he can find out and destroy whatever machine they’re using to mess with their bonds. He has to figure out where _here_ is, first of all, and how to get out.

He takes a moment to inspect his surroundings. There isn’t much. The room is a depressingly plain square-cut box, walls rising above him with no crevices or footholds anywhere. Just before the walls meet the ceiling, long bars of light have been hewn into the cold stone, illuminating the room in a purple glow whose shade Lance is really, _really_ starting to hate. There don’t seem to be any cameras around, but then again, these are aliens; they know how to make things invisible.

His armour and helmet are gone, leaving him clad in just his flimsy flight suit. Or, well, not exactly flimsy, considering the fabric is made out of some thermal Altean material, which is how he didn’t freeze his ass off on Ladene. Small things –he’s just going to be grateful for the small things.

(Okay fine, but for real, Lance has issues with the Paladins’ armour design. In what reality does it make sense for their torso, _ass,_ and upper thighs to not be covered in armour? Please, someone needs to explain this to him. If you’re not going to design the armour to protect those very vulnerable bodily areas –he understands manoeuvrability, and aesthetic beauty, okay? Plus, he has a hot ass, who wouldn’t want to look at that –then at least make the flight suit untearable or something, for the gods’ sake.)

He casts his mind back to the last thing he can remember. Shiro, staring at him with something akin to dawning realization on his face. Then before that, Pidge, irritated, angry. Then before her, Hunk confused, scared. Then Keith, furious…betrayed.

He winces when he remembers the look on Keith’s face, the utter shock in his eyes a second before Lance’s magic and Blue’s quintessence forced him into the Castle and entirely off the planet with the others. Lance had made a promise to Keith –he’d said that he’d never leave, that he wouldn’t disappear the way Shiro did. Lance always did his best to keep his promises, and if he thought he couldn’t, he didn’t make those promises to begin with.

Lance wonders if the vomit he just rolled away from is his own, because he feels like he’s about to puke again thanks to knowing that he made Keith look like that, that he broke his promise.

The realization of exactly what happened to break his promise, and _where_ he is that it’s broken in the first place, hits him like a monster truck losing one of its massive wheels and barrelling into a crowd of terrified onlookers. He remembers the stone cold Galra faces looming over him as he lost consciousness. He remembers one of them raising its blaster and bringing it down on the side of his head to knock him out. He remembers the swarm of Galra soldiers and droids that fell on him once they spotted him in the tunnel.

Ay, shit.

Now he knows where exactly where he is, not just as some vague hint in his mind, but _actually knows;_ the Galra battlecruiser that was on Ladene. Unless he was moved while he was unconscious.

It would explain the purple lighting. Seriously. What the hell is with the Galra and purple? Is it just a fashion trend they’re _all_ unwilling to let go of, or is it that Zarkon loves purple so much and everyone’s too afraid to suggest decorating the halls with another more reasonable colour? Perhaps blue?

The Galra have seriously completely ruined purple for him, for life.

Except for Keith’s eyes, though they’re more…how to say it, they’re more full of _emotion_ than all this monotonous, dullness the Galra surround themselves with. He can pull a damn good poker face, but Keith can’t always quite keep what he’s feeling from his eyes. Keith’s eyes aren’t really only violet, either, but constantly shifting between the grey of storm clouds rolling over hills, then flashing like amethyst crystals held up to the light of the sun, before fading into a smoky black, only when he’s really, truly angry, sometimes so dark that his pupil is indiscernible from his iris.

Oh geez. Lance closes his eyes and lightly tips his head back against the wall in defeat. All this cold, quiet loneliness of this cell is turning him into a poetic sap.

**_:poor lance all alone where no one will come to save you:_ **

Lance jumps at the words that speak – _speak,_ not whisper –in his mind so clearly, it’s like it’s right next to his ear, but echoing inside his mind as well. He’s so startled by its sudden appearance that his hands jerk, the chains clinking around his wrists as he yanks on them, the hot metal digging into skin and likely bruising, if not drawing blood.

And too late, he realizes that the reason they sound so close, High Definition, crystal clear quality, is because he’s not wearing his pendant. His hands clench around nothing, and he realizes, with a sinking of his stomach, why the voices are so clear now, why he can’t kick them back into silence. With his magic at such lows the way it is now, he can’t use that strength, either.

He left it in his room.

In the Castle.

He. Is. Fucked.

He tries to shove the voices back behind the door, to hold it closed for as long as he can –but he can’t even do that. He scrabbles in his mind futilely, but all he gets his cruel laughs and taunting, snide remarks about how useless he is, how pathetic, sad and alone in enemy hands, about to be tortured for information they know he’ll give because he’s too weak to resist.

He’s alone, with the voices in his head. He can feel them stretching, reaching oily black fingers across his mind, tiptoeing their cold fingers down his bones, scratching their claws down the mental walls separating them from him, pressing hard enough to turn him to dust. He whimpers as he presses himself back into the wall, curving his shoulders and drawing his legs up to his chest, as if by making himself smaller, he can make the voices ignore him, pass on.

But they’re not going to do that. They’re in his _head,_ and now they’re trying to reach out further, to feel more, to make him let go of his control over his body and give that control to them, that power they so crave.

Just like last time.

Just like last time, when he looked into the Beast’s flat eyes, devoid of life, as he walked away from Lance lying on the cold, wet ground, the blood of his older brother staining his hands a dark red washed away by the rain pelting him like hale.

Just like last time, when the final thing he remembered before blacking out was looking into the Beast’s eyes, and then waking up cold and alone six months later in the middle of the street where his family lived, a huge chunk of his life sitting empty in his mind, with no one the wiser to where he’d been. He’s managed to hide that little amnesiac titbit from the team, since it was when he was sixteen, and it was ‘only’ for six months. It’s nothing like Shiro’s entire year, nothing like the experimentation done on him, both what he remembers and doesn’t.

He’s managed to play off the sinking feeling he has in his stomach whenever he’s recounting stories about what crazy shenanigans his siblings pulled and is left wondering what stories he missed out on in the time he wasn’t home. No matter what, no matter what he has to do now, he _will not_ let another piece of the puzzle of his life vanish from his mind because he was too weak to fight the voices off.

Because that’s what happens when they’re in control. That’s what happens when he lets them in, even just a little bit. In those rare times when he slipped, for even a minute, he’d completely black out and find himself miles away from where he last remembered himself being. The one time he slipped for much longer than a minute, he lost entire months of his life, with no way to get them back unless he lets them close enough to see what they remember while they were in control, and even that’s too risky to do.

He shakes his head, croaking out a feeble, “No,” before he squeezes his eyes shut and turns all his remaining debile strength to tightening the iron band of will he has over his body. He won’t let that happen again. He _won’t._

The voices flinch at the sudden, unexpected burst of strength, and it’s like banshees screeching in his mind, piercing his ears like needles that push deeper and deeper as they drive into his skull. He grits his teeth and he uses their surprise to push them back, as hard as he can, as far as he can in his present faded state.

_:leave me alone leave me alone LEAVE ME ALONE:_

He doesn’t know how long he spends doing this, panting as sweat drips down his face as he fights against the voices that push back at him, trying to exert their will over his. It could be hours, it could be minutes, weeks, days. He doesn’t know. All he knows is that by the end of it, he’s curled into a foetal position on the floor, shutting his eyes tight, even the low lighting of the purple room proving too bright for his aching eyes, shivering as the sweat cools on his skin from the chilly temperature of the room, stomach cramping like he’s been starved for weeks.

He peels his eyes open groggily when the door slides open with a _whoosh,_ more purple flooding over him. He winces and closes his eyes against the bright light, turning his head to the side away from it. A looming shadow falls over him, and his heart clenches impossibly tight when he fears, for a split second, that it’s a Galra soldier. They’ve come to take him away, to strap him to some table where they’ll poke and prod and tear and slice until there’s nothing left of –

Then the shadow moves. It comes into the cell with smooth, too perfectly balanced steps, posture held rigidly upright. The light from outside the hall is thrown on the form’s face, and Lance isn’t sure if it’s a good thing or not that it’s just a droid. He’s a Paladin of Voltron –surely they can’t think a simple droid is enough to keep him subdued?

“Prisoner 0248,” it drones in a typical mechanical voice. “Stand and face the wall.”

Lance gives it a quick once-over, noting that it’s not aiming its blaster at him, but instead, holding some flat rectangular device in its hand, with a single touchpad button that glows. He has a very bad feeling about that. Seriously, when has it ever proven a good thing to be a prisoner of the enemy, and said enemy (or at least agent of said enemy) is holding a button in its hand?

“Fuck off,” he mutters gravelly. He doesn’t bother to waste his energy on adding other choice expletives since this is just a droid, and won’t appreciate how colourful he can get. “I’m not in the mood.”

The droid lifts not the blaster securely strapped to its side, but the device. “Prisoner 0248, stand and face the wall.”

He scrunches his nose in distaste at it, as if the droid is covered in vomit instead of that little annoying puddle on the otherwise clean floor. “What’d I say, sweetie?” he sneers. “I’m not in the mood.”

The droid doesn’t give him a third chance. It presses the button, and for a split second, nothing happens. Lance is just starting to think that maybe there’s a malfunction with the device or something, when he hears a humming that quickly turns into a low buzz.

Then Lance discovers why whatever’s keeping his hands bound behind his back is so warm against his skin.

A surge of electric shocks crackle through his body, starting right from his wrists and sweeping up his arms before spreading out over his body. A choked cry falls from his lips as his muscle’s lock up, body stiffening as he jerks and falls to the ground like a log, spasms strong enough to crack his bones wreaking havoc over him. His eyes roll back in his head as he spasms for what feels like centuries longer, darkness encroaching on the edges of his vision as his brain rattles in his skull. Even the voices, behind their door, groan in an echo of the agony they share with him.

Then, just as quickly as it started, it stops. The heat that burst from his confined wrists cools back to the warmth they had been, and Lance’s body slowly settles from the electric shocks still twitching his muscles. He lies on the ground, gasping for breath. Every inhale is acid poured into his lungs. The copper tang of blood is on his tongue, and he dimly realizes that he must have bitten his lip. He can’t even feel the sting of it, not through the buzzing in his veins, like the electricity is in his blood.

“Prisoner 0248,” the droid speaks as he struggles to catch his breath. “Stand and face the wall.”

Slowly, Lance painstakingly manages to push himself to his knees, gasping as he hunches over his cramping stomach, back bowed and elbows crooked out at an odd, painful angle, but still in some **_:pathetic:_** attempt at dignity.

If he had the saliva to do it, he’d spit at the droid’s feet, even though it’s just a robot. As it is, he’s saving his spit for his desert of a throat, because even the blood filling his mouth does nothing to alleviate his thirst for some kind of liquid.

He settles for baring his blood-stained teeth at the droid in a savage grin. “I said, _no.”_

“Prisoner 0248, stand and face the wall.”

“No.”

The droid lifts the device again.

↭§↭

No one ever talks about how quiet chaos can be, or how loud and suffocating silence really is.

It’s only when your eardrums rupture after an explosion do you realize that the pandemonium after the blast is quiet. Debris is falling over your head, dust is in your eyes, smoke in your throat, ash coating your skin, but you can’t hear anything. It’s almost like, if you close your eyes, none of it is happening. You can close your eyes and picture yourself on a beach with shimmering turquoise waters a few feet away, and you won’t notice that your legs are gone, and that you’re bleeding more than you thought you could.

Keith wants to close his eyes and pretend this isn’t happening. He wants to pretend that when he sprints to Blue’s hangar, he’ll find her there. When he does find her there, he wants to pretend that he’ll run to her and get her to open up for him and let him see for himself that Lance is sitting in the cockpit, spinning around in the chair like a little kid, grinning from ear to ear and eager to hear the rest of the team fawn over him for saving their asses in the awing way he did.

He wants to play pretend, but he can’t. Because when he runs to Blue’s hanger with the others hot on his heels, she is there. But her particle barrier is up. Her head is down between her massive paws, and she’s _crying,_ the sound mechanical and rumbling through the floor and the towering walls, but that keening sound breaking out of her is _grief_. The other Lions are turned to her, as if trying to reach out to her, to protect her, comfort her, but she _doesn’t stop crying_ and Keith wants to join her, but he can’t, he can’t, because this _cannot be happening._

Lance has to be here.

But he’s not.

“What’s going on?” Allura says, her voice trembling so much more than he has ever heard before. “Why is the Blue Lion acting like this? Where’s Lance? How did you get here?”

No one can answer her. The silence, it’s heavy, pressing down on his bones, slowing the flow of his blood, making every beat of his heart pound in his head like a god’s warhammer is being slammed repeatedly against his skull, making him think, _My heart’s beating, is his?_ at every pulse.

He hates himself for letting the thought through.

Keith takes a step forward, almost stumbles when his knees lock, but he pushes forward. He shoves through the need to turn tail and run away from Blue’s cries, and pushes forward until he’s running toward her, towards the anger and sorrow and grief emanating from her and crashing over him like tidal waves. Shiro calls out to him, but he blatantly ignores him as he sprints until he’s his hands are up against Blue’s particle barrier. It ripples at his touch, but it doesn’t fall.

“Blue,” he whispers, hoarse from all the shouting he’s done. “Blue, open up.”

No response.

She ignores him, but her keening quietens just a little, like she’s watching him. She doesn’t lower her barrier. The others are gathered behind him now, watching him silently, and he wants to _scream_ at them to help him get Blue’s barrier down so they can march in and drag Lance out of the cockpit and give him hell for scaring them like that.

He taps the barrier again, a little harder. It shimmers, holds. “C’mon, Blue, open up. Let –let Lance out. We need to see him.”

Blue’s gone completely silent now. She lifts her head, turns, and fixes him with a yellow stare that is accusing. He doesn’t know what she’s thinking, but he can feel Red at the back of his mind. She hovers close, wary, watchful. Almost like she thinks Blue will attack her Paladin. Almost like she’s protecting her Paladin –from Blue.

The thought snaps the last tether that was holding him together until now.

His hands curl into fists and he slams them against the barrier, pounding and yelling, “Where is he! You were supposed to protect him! Where’s Lance?! He has to be in there, let him out!”

A pair of strong arms, one human and one made of alien metal that glints from the lights of the hangar, come up around his torso to haul him, kicking and yelling, back before he can break his hands beating on the barrier. “Keith, stop it!”

“No!” he doesn’t stop, continues to aggressively wiggle and jab his elbows at every bit of Shiro he can reach as the other man rapidly backs away from Blue while everyone else watches in tearful silence. He hates those looks, those _defeated_ looks on their faces. Why do they look like that? Lance isn’t gone, he’s fine, they just –they just need to find him. “Lance is in there! He has to be –she’s –she’s keeping him from us. Make her let him out!”

“Keith,” Shiro finally sets him down, but before Keith can run back at Blue’s barrier, Shiro spins him around and sets his hands on Keith’s shoulders, firmly pinning him in place. “You need to _calm down._ Attacking the Blue Lion is going to get you nowhere.”

Keith’s hands come up and close around Shiro’s wrists, ready to pry them off, but he falters at the look on Shiro’s face. He is _devastated._ He’s too pale, almost ashen, eyes too bright for normal, white lines bracketing the thin line of his mouth. He’s hands are steady on Keith, but gripping his shoulders a little too tight, almost like he’s trying to stop them from shaking on their own.

Distantly, he hears the others coming up behind him. He can hear Hunk’s quiet, tearful sniffles, his quick breath as he tries to get himself under control. He can hear the faint scritch of Pidge’s fingers thumbing at the lenses of her glasses as she cleans them and puts them on her nose, a nervous tic she only ever falls into when she’s trying so hard to keep her emotions at bay. He can hear the space mice squeaking in confusion quietly at Allura, her hushing whispers to them.

Keith’s lip trembles as his eyes dart between Shiro’s. “Where –where is he, Shiro?” he asks. He hates how lost he sounds, like a little boy abandoned at the grocery store, still in the toys section when his parents are long-gone. “Where’s Lance? Why isn’t he here?”

Shiro’s lips tighten, anguish stealing across his eyes before he closes them briefly and shakes his head. “Lance made Blue help him teleport us and the Lions back here, but…” he pauses, confusion darting over his features. “Black says there wasn’t enough for him to come, too.”

Keith frowns, trying to breathe around the boulder lodged in his throat as he sends a question out to Red. That can’t be right. Yeah, Lance looked like death warmed over after he stopped that grenade from turning them all to burned cinders, but if he had Blue to help him, if she helped him get the rest of them _and_ the Lions back safely to the Castle, surely she could have brought him back with her too. There’s a brief moment of confusion from Red before realization strikes, and with it, a sensation Keith never thought he’d feel from her.

Remorse.

For Blue, her grieving sister. For Keith, her confused and lost Paladin. For Lance, her sister’s cub.

Shiro is telling the truth.

 _He couldn’t come,_ Red’s voice is like the crackle of a low-burning fire in his mind, too hot and raging most of the times, but now it is a slow, warm comfort in the chaos of emotions he’s whirling in. _He used everything he had to bring you all back safe. To bring us back, when his only obligation should be Blue._

“But he promised,” he croaks. Lance doesn’t break his promises. “He said he wouldn’t leave. What –what the hell are they going to do to him, Shiro?”

Shiro pales, and Keith clenches his hands to fists to keep them from shaking. Oh god, Lance is a Paladin, the Blue Paladin of Voltron. If the Galra could imprison Shiro and force him to fight in the arena for a year, use him for experiments and take his arm, all before they realized he would be the leader of the armed thorn in their sides, what will they do to Lance? Lance, who they already know pilots the Blue Lion?

What if there are Druids on the ship they took Lance away in? What if _Haggar_ is on that ship?

What if they’re going to Zarkon’s Central Command right now?

Shiro’s lips turn down, brows wrinkling as he gives Keith a strange look he’s too numbed to interpret, before pulling Keith into a hug. Keith’s too stunned by everything that’s happened that he can’t bring himself to lift his arms up and around Shiro’s waist, to return the hug like he normally does when Shiro hugs him, after the older had spent literal months getting Keith used to even that simple touch. But Shiro doesn’t seem to care about that. He just tightens his hold, like he’s trying to hold the jagged pieces of Keith up by sheer force of will alone. He rests his chin over Keith’s head, simply holding him.

The embrace should be awkward because of their armour, but it’s not, because Keith feels like it –Shiro – is the only thing holding him together right now. He can’t even begin to understand _why_ he feels so hurt, why he feels like a piece of him has literally been yanked out and shredded before being shoved back in, but all he knows that it hurts so much, and he just wants it to stop, he just wants Lance to come back _home_.

But he’s not home.

Then, there, he feels the first stirrings of anger, and he embraces it readily because at least that he understands. Anger, that he knows like the back of his hand. The slow kind, the one that simmers in your stomach like a volcano building up to an eruption that rains heat and ash on everything around it. The burning kind, the one that sits in your chest like a little dragon and _roars_ at everything that comes too close. The kind that explodes like a raging inferno, like a grenade thrown at an invisible shield and bursting around you like a shower of fire.

Anger, he knows. Anger, he welcomes with open arms. The volcano, the dragon, the grenade, he’ll take it all over the confusing _emptiness_ in his stomach that battles with the anger for dominance in his heart.

The stupid idiot sacrificed himself for them, just like he’d been so frighteningly ready to do for Coran on Arus, and with the ion canon at Xyphelia. Keith was right –Lance does have some kind of deranged self-sacrificing propensity that borders on suicide.

Keith is going to _kill_ Lance when they get him back.

Shiro steps back then. Perhaps he senses the change in Keith from the tight hold of his body. He keeps his Galra hand on Keith’s shoulder, as if to hold him in place and stop him from running out (to, oh, say, maybe jump into Red and head out to start searching for Lance the only way he knows how, through the burning light of the stars). Keith doesn’t look at Shiro’s face, because he knows the look he’ll see there will have that gnawing _emptiness_ inside him win out over the anger.

And that, that Keith has no idea how to handle.

Shiro sighs heavily, laden with the weight that sits on his shoulders, the weight he keeps the others from noticing is there with encouraging smiles, good advice, the occasional joke, well-meaning pats on the back or shoulder (but no more than that, never quite more than that, because Shiro keeps a tight hold on himself, restricts himself of too much when it comes to physical touch). He looks back to the team standing behind them, all just as lost and confused, thrown at sea because one of their own isn’t here.

“Princess,” he says quietly. Keith has never heard him sound so tired before. “Let’s head back to the bridge and Coran. We’ll explain what happened there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm updating this chapter at the same time as updating chapter 105 (yes. You read right) of my original work on Wattpad and I'm just SO HAPPY I've completed that work and I'm not simultaneously working on that and this fic, because I'd be so torn and pulled in two different directions, it's so frustrating.
> 
> Word of advise from someone who's been writing fictional stories for eight years; don't write multiple stories at the same time. Focus on one, if you get ideas for another story write them down somewhere, or even start a chapter or two, but focus most of your energy on the one big project. Otherwise you'll burn yourself out and not do as well as you want to on EITHER story.
> 
> ALSO, I drew [a picture](https://azurehyn.tumblr.com/post/170178230367/hey-guys-so-this-is-the-tattoo-i) of Lance's Seal/family sigil/tattoo. I came up with it out of nowhere, so it doesn't mean anything except for what I make it to mean in this AU. 
> 
> As always, please do leave a comment on your thoughts with this chapter! :) I love reading your comments, and replying to them, they give me life and motivation!
> 
> [Wattpad](https://www.wattpad.com/user/azurehyn) || [Tumblr](https://www.azurehyn.tumblr.com)
> 
> EDIT: Idk why this is happening, but for some people clicking the above link to the picture of Lance's tattoo that I drew, it's redirecting to a sex website which is, uh, NOT GOOD to say the least, so here it is again. Hopefully it works out better 
> 
> [this link better freaking work](https://azurehyn.tumblr.com/post/170178230367/hey-guys-so-this-is-the-tattoo-i)


	4. i ran all night and day (i couldn't get away)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team continues to barely deal with Lance's capture, the Blue Lion grieves, and Keith Struggles™.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *throws almost 14k at you* ENJOY!
> 
> Like I said. Short-to-moderate chapters are a foreign concept to me. People who can manage short chapters well are faeries.

What they’re doing isn’t quite a debriefing, but more of an attempt to gather their wits about them, to figure out what happened. Get everybody on the same page. Map out their next game plan, after the previous was just obliterated like blueprints being torn up by a temperamental child.

The Paladins changed out of their armour, though they still keep their helmets close by in case Lance tries to contact them that way, and are scattered over the bridge. It’s almost like they can’t quite let themselves be too close to the other, not without Lance there to hold them all together. Lance is what connects them all.

Pidge, she’s close to Hunk, and Shiro, and Lance. When it’s not Hunk leaving Altean versions of sticky notes on her laptop screen and tablets, reminding her to eat, it’s Shiro doing it, and telling her to go to sleep. When it’s not Shiro doing it, it’s Lance pestering and bugging her until she finally storms off to her room to sleep out of pure spite and to prove to Lance that yes, she _can_ sleep, thank you very much. If it’s not that, it’s Lance carrying her off to bed when she falls asleep where she happens to be at the moment.

Hunk’s steadily getting closer to Keith, offering him second place as taste tester after Lance, reassuring Keith that just because he’s half-Galra, he isn’t a monster or evil like a distressingly large majority of the race seems to be. Hunk is closest to Lance, who helps him when his anxiety gets too bad, who stays up all night to talk or just be there for Hunk when he stress-bakes-cooks.

Keith’s close to Shiro, the man he sees as an older brother figure, the man who took the time to get to know Keith for _Keith,_ the person he is, and not the person the rumours of his endless fist-fights painted him out to be. He’s close to Lance, too, their rivalry more of playful, competitive banter than true attempts at one-upping each other for the sole purpose of being better than the other.

Shiro’s close to Allura, their shared responsibility of Voltron and leading the team giving them a connection, a way to support each other when the other falters, because Allura’s technically still only a teenager. A ten-thousand-year-old teenager who’d already been approaching the Altean equivalent to adulthood, but still one nonetheless, who watched her entire planet be destroyed by the race Keith shares half his DNA with. Shiro recognizes that, helps her when she needs it, even as she helps him through his flashbacks and nightmares.

Lance does that too. Keith doesn’t know how he does it, since he seems pretty adamant about getting enough sleep, but Lance is almost always the one to find Shiro wandering the halls of the Castle and checking in with the Paladins to make sure they’re safe and sound. Keith has caught him several times, watching as Lance walks with Shiro down the halls, and then softly tells him stories of his family back on Earth when they find a quiet place to sit and talk, until Shiro eventually falls asleep. He stays with Shiro until he wakes up, too.

Coran is closest to Allura, both sharing the memories of their entire planet and home being so cruelly ripped from their hands, and being the last two Alteans left alive. He’s close to Shiro, the latter relying on Coran’s quirky wisdom and seemingly infinite knowledge of the planets they liberate from Galra control. Coran, too, is close Lance. Lance is the one who moans and complains about the cleaning out healing pods, but is always the first to pick up the rag and bucket of water to go and do just that when Coran asks for help from them all. Lance is the one who listens to Coran’s stories of Altea, of his family, of the son he lost in the fall of Altea.

On their own, they’re not close enough to each other –the one thing that keeps them all connected to one another, that tethers them together with an unbreakable bond full of cringe-worthy pick-up lines, endless flirtatious teases, loud and obnoxious laughs, is Lance. He’s the leg of Voltron, the support that holds them up, that keeps them from crashing to the ground and breaking apart to a million pieces.

Without him, they’re pieces of a broken machine, floating aimlessly in the immense void of space.

How can the absence of something feel so heavy when its presence isn’t there to press down on you? This is how. Keith hates that it’s only now, when he is gone, that they realize they can’t live without their beating heart.

Allura, Coran, and Shiro stand at the front of the bridge, back to the stars the Castle aimlessly drifts through as they face the others. Hunk is at his station, fingers tapping out nervous, random beats on the dulled screen that holds his keyboard. Keith is leaning against the wall to the left, arms crossed tight over his chest, staring fixedly at the ground and refusing to meet anyone’s eye. Pidge isn’t too far from Keith, sitting with her back braced against the same wall, legs stretched out in front of her, too dazed to move as much as all her caffeine-fuelled Chihuahua-esque buzzing energy usually has her.

Allura and Coran, to their credit, can’t stop staring at Shiro after he manages to force out a passable attempt at an explanation as to why there are only four Paladins on the bridge, instead of the five there should be. Under any other circumstance, the faces they make would be funny. Allura’s pointy ears have drooped, almost comically. Coran’s eyes are so wide that the Paladins half expect his eyeballs to simply pop out and dangle over his cheeks.

But Allura is pale, too pale, almost ghostly. Even the pink Altean scale-markings on her cheekbones seem whitewashed, a wan imitation of their usual light pink. Coran’s moustache wilts limply where it usually bounces with animation and a possible life force of its own. He hasn’t said a single word since Shiro finished talking. Coran looks absolutely heartbroken, and it is in this moment they jarringly remember how close he and Lance are, how much Coran looks upon Lance like the son he lost on Altea all those years ago.

And now it’s like losing a son all over again.

After almost five minutes of disbelieving silence ticks by, Allura shakes her head, barely registering the chitter of one of the mice sitting on her head nearly getting dislodged by her move. The mouse, the big pink-looking one, clings to the bun atop her head, while the other mice hunker down on her shoulders to keep from being thrown off, and yet another mouse peeks out from one of the previously hidden pockets in Allura’s dress with a sad chirrup.

Even the goddamn mice can tell what’s going on, that one of the Paladins is missing.

 _Not missing,_ he corrects himself scathingly. _Captured._

“I –I don’t understand,” she says softly. Everyone is speaking quietly, like there’s some kind of jinx they’ll trip if they dare talk any louder. “What do you mean, Lance teleported you? Why didn’t he come himself?”

“He said that it takes a lot of juice,” Pidge mumbles, staring out blankly from where she’s sitting.

“Juice?” Allura repeats, unused to the term.

“Energy,” Hunk answers. “It takes a lot of energy for him to teleport. Bl –blinking’s easier. He liked to –he liked to blink behind me when I’m cooking and see how many times he could scare me before I got used to it.” He hiccups, but doesn’t say any more.

After Keith, and Coran, he’s spoken the least out of everyone present. No one tries to make him talk; they can all sense the thin line Hunk’s wavering on. All it could take is one wrong look, and he could be thrown into another anxiety attack, just like the one Shiro barely managed to calm him down from after they realized that Lance was still on Ladene while they weren’t anymore. No one knows how to help him. It was always Lance who was there to talk him out of one, always Lance to fend one off before it could even really become an anxiety attack.

Pidge remembers how quickly Lance had recognized one and helped Hunk through it the first time they’d failed a simulation. Iverson had eaten Lance out for calling a stop to the simulation, and Lance just –he just walked right past Iverson without so much as an excuse as he held a quaking Hunk by the arm and led him out. They returned maybe half an hour later, and Iverson gave Lance detention. Before he could give Hunk one too, Lance stepped up and mouthed off to Iverson so that he’d forget about Hunk in favour of scolding Lance some more.

Lance got two extra hours of detention for that. He came back to the dorm, grinning from ear-to-ear. Pidge remembers staring at him, dumbfounded, wondering why he’d be so stupid enough to get himself extra detention, before she returned to her computer and to decrypting the Kerberos mission reports she’d hacked from the Garrison’s security files.

Pidge lifts her hand and presses her knuckles against her closed mouth as tight as she can, squeezing her eyes shut to keep the tears from slipping down her face. She’ll cry, she knows she will, but the tears can come _after_ she finds Lance. She just –she just needs a minute to process what happened. If he doesn’t, she’ll burn out, and be of no use to anyone then.

She breathes in, slowly, once, twice, before she feels settled enough to continue. Her voice still tremors.

“He –he asked the Blue Lion for help.” She continues. “I think he used some of her quintessence to power up enough to get us and our Lions back here.”

“What?” Allura asks, eyes widening. She barely glances at Coran as he turns away then, slowly walking to a console, pulling up things onto the view screen that floats in front of him every once in a while and studying them closely. “He used quintessence, the Blue Lion’s quintessence? Like how her connection to him has led to his developing his ability to manipulate water in the form of ice?”

Pidge shakes her head. “No, I –I think he literally used _her_ quintessence, not what part is connected to her. Green says that Blue infused more of her own quintessence in her than the Lions ever do, even when we form Voltron, so that he could –so that he could get us back, all of us. His new powers are more of an after-effect of being bonded to Blue over a long period of time.”

Shiro nods pensively, glancing at what Coran’s doing before focusing back on the team. “Pidge is right. Lance bonded with Blue much faster than any of us, and I think his connection to her is stronger, too. Still, I doubt he’d have managed it on his own magic without Blue’s help.”

“But why didn’t he come back, too?” Hunk sniffles. “Why isn’t he here?”

Keith clenches his jaw so tight it starts to hurt. “Red says he used everything he had to get us and the Lions back, and that there wasn’t enough left for him.” Or something like that. Red said something about Lance having to use his own magic to get himself back, and not Blue’s quintessence, but there wasn’t enough of his magic left.

Keith’s fingers twitch. He really wants to punch something. He’s going to need to, soon, or he’ll end up turning around and punching the wall he’s leaning on again and again, until his knuckles bleed, and then some more. Anything to let out the anger and frustration at all their _talking_ in a way that won’t end in someone’s broken nose.

“Princess,” Coran calls quietly. Everyone turns to him immediately, almost surprised to hear him speak after all his silence. He’s frowning at the view screen in front of him. Allura quickly makes her way over to him, latching onto the view screen and wondering what Coran could be looking at.

From his place at the wall, Keith perks up slightly the longer the silence stretches without a word passing between Allura and Coran. He looks up from the floor and sees Allura staring at the screen. Confusion has furrowed her brows low, and the mouse on her head scrambles down her hair to join its brethren perched on her shoulders. They all stare at the view screen, and Keith cranes his neck to see it too, but can’t over their heads, too far away.

Allura finally moves, turning to Coran. He shakes his head, at a loss for the answers she mutely asks him. She looks back to the Paladins, seeing on their faces their varying degrees of numb silence, grief, loss, anger.

“Paladins,” she begins slowly. “Are you absolutely sure Lance did not arrive in the Castle with you? Perhaps he landed somewhere other than the bridge?” her eyes go back to the screen that Coran is still focused on. “Or maybe it took him a little longer to get back?”

Shiro frowns thoughtfully at her. “But the comm unit in his helmet is off, and his armour isn’t sending any readings on his stats, right?” he looks like saying those words, almost implying that Lance isn’t alive for his armour to register anything, is like having his teeth pulled out.

Coran answers this time. “That is indeed the case. I’ve set the Castle to alert us of any indication of Lance from either his armour or helmet, as well as to identify any distress signals that could be coming from him by parsing his voice through the Castle’s systems. So far, there’s been nothing.”

“So why are you asking that, Princess?”

Allura steps back and points at the view screen. Everyone moves closer at that, Pidge scrambling from her spot at the wall to get a better view while the others gather around in a loose circle behind her. On the view screen is what looks to be a dorm room, much like the ones the Paladins’ sleep in. The room is a dark blue colour, with lines and curves of lighter blue being the only hint as to the shape of the furniture in the room and other miscellaneous objects strewn about.

There doesn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary about the room –except for a humanoid figure’s heat signature moving around the room, with a vague outline of what might be a pack with a pointy top strapped to the figure’s back. It drifts from the table near the room’s door, to the bed, to the door that leads into the bathroom, the closet, and back to the table. It wanders back to the closet, reaching in, pulling something out, some kind of shirt.

“As you can see,” Allura tells them, startling Keith out of closely watching the heat signature’s movements. “There is someone in Lance’s room, and the alarms haven’t gone off.”

Pidge asks, “Are they supposed to?”

Coran nods. “The Castle is programmed to alert the Princess and I if anyone whose body signature does not match that of yours, or ours, is anywhere in the Castle or your rooms without authorization. The Castle’s been set to identify your genetic markers to make sure of such.”

Ordinarily, Keith would find that more than a little creepy. Now, now he just wants to know what it means that there’s someone in Lance’s room and that the Castle hasn’t alarmed at their presence, seemingly because the Castle thinks it’s Lance in there.

Keith is afraid to let himself dare to hope so.

“No alarm has gone off.” Allura adds. “But if Keith says the Red Lion believes Lance couldn’t come back because there was not enough of his magic left to teleport him here with you, who is in his room right now?”

Keith doesn’t know how to feel about that. He’s afraid of letting the little smidgen of hope in his chest grow into something more, only to be brutally crushed to find that it’s just an intruder. Even just the little bit is doing chaos to his heart, squeezing it tighter and tighter until he can barely breathe as he watches the heat signature with laser focus, eyes never leaving its figure.

What if Red and Blue were wrong? What if Lance just needed a little time to gather up enough magic to teleport himself back, right out from under the Galra’s noses? Sure, he’d be so much more exhausted than Keith’s ever seen him from all the magic he’s already used (he doesn’t need to be as smart as Hunk and Pidge to figure out that teleporting four other people, plus _five Lions,_ even with Blue’s help, would take a _lot_ out of someone), but at least he’d be _here._ Lance would be _safe,_ safe at _home,_ with them. They would take care of him. God damn it, _Keith_ will take care of him and protect him from his own self-destructive tendencies if need be.

Just as long as he’s here, in the Castle, with them.

But what if they weren’t wrong? What if this isn’t Lance, but something else completely? What if Lance is already suffering all the unimaginable horrors Keith can’t stop picturing the Galra might be putting him through just for information on Voltron?

Allura continues to regard the screen contemplatively, tapping her finger to her bottom lip in thought. “Whoever it is, the only plausible explanation I can think of is that it’s some intruder who’s managed to mimic Lance’s DNA enough to not set the Castle’s alarm –” she cuts herself off and glances back at the Paladins with a pained look in her eye.

No one needs her to voice what her words have them thinking; could the Galra have been fast enough to do something to Lance and get his DNA so they could break into the Castle when they are at their most vulnerable, with only four out of five Paladins left to defend it? What could it be that they’re doing to Lance to get it?

“Is there a video camera we can use to see?” he asks. He’s almost surprised at how relatively even his voice comes out, with none of the warbling his heart is doing. “To see who it is?”

Allura shakes her head. “No. In order to give you some privacy, the only cameras in your rooms are heat-sensor recording devices. It’s why we’re only seeing a heat signature.” She glances back at the screen. “Someone is going to have to go and retrieve whoever that is, and bring them here.”

No one steps forward to do it.

No one really wants to go to his room, to his personal space, expecting and hoping and praying that it’s Lance, only to be sorely disappointed that it’s someone else, to have to go into high-alert because there’s an intruder in the Castle, when all they want to do is focus on getting their friend back.

“You might not need to, just yet,” Coran says softly.

They turn back to him, and he gestures at the screen. They all silently watch as the figure moves towards the door, standing in front of it for a long time. Probably trying to figure out how to open the door. Keith’s thoughts on it being an intruder pause; if it was a Galra who’d somehow infiltrated the Castle, they’d know how to open the door. He’d been on enough Galra ships to know that their doors operated on the same basic mechanism as the Castle’s Altean system doors. If it was a Galra, they wouldn’t be wasting time loitering around in Lance’s room.

But if it’s not a Galra, and if it’s not Lance, then who the hell is it?

“Why aren’t they opening the door?” Pidge wonders aloud, voicing Keith’s own thoughts.

“Maybe they don’t know how to?” Hunk asks.

“If it’s Galra, they do.” Keith replies.

“Keith is right about that.” Coran agrees. “Altean and Galra technology is at least similar in basic room access functions. Whoever’s in there isn’t familiar with it.”

Just then, the figure stretches out an orange arm and touches it to the wall. They see the door open, and Coran immediately pulls up a second view screen. This one is a video recording, from the security cameras in the halls outside the Paladins’ room. The figure hasn’t stepped out yet, hovering at the threshold of the door.

“Paladins,” Allura says firmly, but still in that gentle voice that shows them she’s as much at a loss as they are. “I know that you –we –are all hurting over Lance’s capture. We will get him back; this I promise you. We will do everything in our power to get our Paladin, our _friend,_ back. However, we must stay alert. We may have dealt Zarkon a big blow with the teleduv and putting him out of commission for now, but the empire itself is still very much active. The Galra have Lance, and they know we are at a disadvantage because of that. Whoever it is out there could pose a threat to us, aiming to strike at us when we are in a vulnerable state.”

Shiro nods decisively, stepping forward to Allura’s side in a show of solidarity. “The Princess is right, team. We’ll get Lance back, but right now, we need to figure out who that is, and how they got on the ship without setting off any alarms.”

Everyone nods. Despite the melancholy hanging over them like a dark miasma that clings to them despite the hoping flickering like a waning candle in the wind, they are all eager for something to do, some game plan to set their sights and focus on. Anything that will help them feel like they’re closer to getting Lance back.

Because whoever it is in Lance’s room, they appeared at the same time Lance was captured. It can’t be coincidence –in this war, little ever is.

“Pidge,” Shiro calls. Her spine immediately straightens from a slouch at Shiro’s firm tone of voice. “You and I will go out to the hall and intercept the intruder. If they prove compliant, we’ll bring them to the bridge.”

“If not?” she asks, pulling out her bayard and drumming her fingers over it, shifting from foot to foot, already eager to get moving.

“We’ll make them.” Shiro doesn’t elaborate on that. “If they won’t willingly come to the bridge, we’ll take them down to the cells and question them. Hunk,” he glances at the Yellow Paladin, who is pale enough to be of worry. He’s too much of a nervous wreck right not to reliably go out in the field, even if said field is just out in the hallways. Shiro sighs. “Keith, you’ll stand guard outside the door, in case the intruder tries to make a break for it. Hunk, you’ll remain here with the Princess and Coran and monitor the situation from here. If the intruder resists, we’ll head out to help.”

Everyone springs into action as soon as Shiro gives them a single nod in go-ahead. He and Pidge head for the door, moving quickly and with a purpose. Keith looks back at Hunk, who remains hunched over his station’s keyboard and muttering inaudibly to himself. He wonders if he should say something to Hunk, anything, but he can’t even begin to think of what he could possibly say. His best friend was just captured by aliens that probably really want to kill him, maybe –god, _probably,_ it’s not even maybe, but probably –torture him as well.

What can Keith possibly say to comfort him, when he can’t even settle his own nerves and worries?

He shakes his head, guilt sinking in his stomach, and quickly jogs over to the door. The truth is, Keith just doesn’t know what to say to Hunk. To anyone. Shiro’s barely able to get Hunk out of the worries that plague his mind, and Shiro is leagues ahead of Keith when it comes to talking to others, and _emotions._ With his complete lack of ability to do and handle either, he’ll probably end up saying the wrong thing to Hunk.

What he _wants_ to do is go punch and kick the living daylights out of the Galra that took Lance. What he knows he’ll have to settle for until he can do that is training himself bloody against the Castle’s gladiators, once this intruder situation is dealt with. He won’t be of any help to anyone, he thinks, until they get Lance back. Not in any emotionally meaningful way, at least.

Keith glances back at the view screen to see that Coran is trying to get the security camera outside to pan in on the persons till hovering at the doorway of Lance’s room. He’d have preferred to go with Pidge, to see who it is for himself, to get to the intruder first and immediately press them for answers. But he can’t –just the idea of going to Lance’s room, _entering_ it, or even just being by the door and able to see within, is too much for him.

Even if he’s not going inside, he’s not sure he can go anywhere near Lance’s room yet. His room is just that –Lance’s room. It’s full of everything that helps to make Lance who he is. His clothes, his favourite jacket that he rarely takes off, his shoes, the memorabilia Keith has seen him picking up from the planets they visit, things he bought from the space malls they’ve been to with what little money Pidge hadn’t already won from him in their weekly poker games.

Keith already feels Lance’s loss too keenly. His loss is still too close, too raw, too soon. It’ll be like rubbing salt crystals in a wound that’s still leaking blood, open and susceptible to pain.

As Keith watches Shiro’s retreating back vanish down the hall as he takes up post outside the bridge’s doors, Pidge already having run on ahead, he wonders if Shiro knew that, and if that’s why he went with Pidge instead of pairing Keith with her.

Keith gets bored in a remarkably short time (three minutes). He takes out his luxite blade out, ready to spring into action at any moment, but choosing to pass the time by watching the Castle’s lights play over the blade, tilting it in every which way that will guarantee he doesn’t catch sight of his own reflection. He doesn’t want to see what he looks like; he already caught a glimpse of his pale, haggard face when he’d changed out of his armour in his bedroom.

When he gets bored of that (one minute later), he starts flipping the blade up and down, watching it spin end over end, remembering the astonishment and dawning horror and confusion that came with the realization of what it meant when the dagger transformed into a Marmora sword. He forces himself to think of who the intruder might be, what possible reason they could have for suddenly appearing in Lance’s room, instead of imagining what could be happening to Lance right now.

It doesn’t work very well.

By the time he hears voices coming up the hall, he’s pacing from one end of the wall to the other, running his hands through his hair in aggravated frustration as he replays those final damning moments in his head over and over, again and again. He can’t forget the look on Lance’s face as blood dripped from his nose, and the way his hands shook with fine tremors. He’d looked so…tired. Tired, and in some sort of pain that twisted his expression to that look he gets whenever he tries to hide his injuries, but at the same time he looked relieved?

Does that even make sense? _How_ the hell does that even make sense? He’d _known_ that he would get captured, so why would he look so reli –

He comes to a screeching halt, facing the door, eyes wide as the realization hits him with the force of a bolt of lightning. Lance had known he would get captured. He’d known he didn’t have enough magic left in him to teleport himself back to the Castle along with the others –but that was the point, wasn’t it?

Lance had known that he would get the others safely back to the Castle, even if he didn’t make it. He was relieved _because_ they made it.

Keith’s lips pull back over his teeth. He was seriously going to _maul_ that suicidal, self-sacrificing idiot for doing something so stupid instead of _fighting back,_ Voltron be damned.

“Keith,” Shiro calls out in a taught voice.

He glances up, more in surprise at the strange tone than anything else. Shiro sounds…annoyed. His voice is tight, wary, a little strangled, but Keith’s known Shiro long enough to tell when he’s feeling completely blown out of the water. It doesn’t happen often, mostly because Shiro’s too attentive to let much get by him, but when it does happen, he sounds a little lost, like he just has no idea what to do, what to say. Thrown out in the middle of the sea with a boat and no oars, no rations, no explanation. Keith has no idea what it is about the intruder that could make Shiro sound like that. Maybe they’re not Galra after all?

Nothing, however, could quite prepare him for the sight that greets him.

Shiro and Pidge walk toward him side-by-side. That’s not strange –what is, is the fact that both have their hands raised, as if facing a cop who’s told them to put their hands up lest they get shot for non-compliance. Shiro’s lips are set in a thin line, eyes slightly narrowed as he shakes his head just a little to stop Keith from immediately leaping forward to them, luxite blade clutched tight in his hands.

Keith glances at Pidge. She has the most infuriated scowl he’s ever seen on her face before, one to rival his own. There have been many times when he’s seen Pidge angry, truly angry. This isn’t necessarily one of them –more like, she looks supremely pissed to have been caught off-guard.

When his eyes drift past the two, he sees why she looks so annoyed, why Shiro’s giving him warning-off looks.

Behind them is a girl.

A human girl.

She’s tall, about Hunk’s height, maybe an inch or two shorter. She’s more on the lean, athletic side, her footsteps behind Shiro and Pidge’s completely silent, body moving lithe like a caged tiger on the prowl. Her skin is a strangely familiar dusky tone, the same shade of light brown that he’s used to seeing, like coffee mixed in with too much milk (human coffee, that is. Altean coffee is a weird shade of pink that contributes to Keith’s suspicion of it and inclination to tea). His nose twitches, sensitive enough to catch the faint whiff of lavender, an _Earth_ smell, and the scent of grass.

Grass. _Earth_ grass, that distinct smell that fills your nose when it’s the late in the afternoon and you’re lying down in a field of flowers and _grass_ and staring up at the endless blue of the sky stretching out above you, a dome that never ends in either direction.

A wild mane of curly brown hair mixed in with streaks of sun-dyed lighter brown is pulled into a high ponytail that falls down behind the girl’s back, with thin braids and silver and gold beads threaded through the braids scattered all throughout. He’s no stranger to ponytails (they’re useful for when you just don’t feel like cutting your hair but you also happen to sweat a lot when you train and shove helmets on your head every day), but Keith’s head hurts just looking at how tight she’s yanked her hair back.

It takes Keith half a second to note three unusual things about her. One; her eyes are blue. An electric blue that catches him off-guard, because even though they’re a much lighter shade, and filled with so much fury that he’s never seen in them before, they look almost exact like Lance’s eyes. The similarity is uncanny, almost eerie.

Her eyes are the blue of a lightning storm seconds away from zapping down and drilling a hole into the earth. They are the pure blue of a spark of electricity fizzing up, seconds before it turns a blinding white. They are ringed in a line of black that gives them a sharper, more focused look, that almost sets her eyes apart from her face, almost makes her look inhuman.

Keith’s eyes drift over the girl’s features. She looks almost elfin, but something strange wriggles in his stomach when he sees the sharp shape of Lance’s nose in hers, the almost permanently cocky set of eyebrows just a little thicker than Lance’s that seems more questioning than haughty on her, the high cheekbones that could cut glass that Keith’s found himself staring at in Lance far more times than he’s willing to admit. Even the angry twist of her thin lips reminds him of Lance.

(Actually, if he looks closely he can see a break in her left eyebrow, a scar that makes her look a little more badass than Keith is willing and sane enough to admit.)

The second thing he notices about her that’s very, _very_ strange; she’s got a bow and arrow trained on Shiro and Pidge’s backs.

_A bow and arrow._

And not only that, it’s two arrows nocked on the bowstring. Two arrows. One for Pidge, and one for Shiro.

She’s wearing dark brown, loose and flowy trousers that flare out around her, with what might be black tights under those that tuck into ankle-length combat boots. What looks like leather braces adorn her forearms, straps concealing the hilts of small knives. Over that she’s wearing a grey hoodie with a leather jacket over it, a bulging messenger bag on her hip whose straps crisscross over her chest with the straps of a _quiver_ full of feather-fletched arrows at her back.

What the fuck.

The third thing he sees that’s even stranger about this girl?

Her ears are pointy. As in, Allura-and-Coran-pointy. Actually, no –her ears are just a little longer than theirs, flicked back to press against her skull in a decidedly feline look of ultimate suspicion. But she doesn’t have their coloured scale markings at her cheekbones, which means she can’t be Altean, however that could be. His inner-cryptid-loving ass helpfully points out that her ears look elf pointy.

Again. What the fuck.

Shiro opens his mouth to say something, but before he can, the girl’s iridescent eyes flicker to him, catching the movement of his jaw, before they snap back to Keith. It’s almost like her eyes pin him in place, rendering him immobile.

“You,” she calls out, voice a little husky, but not exactly grating in the way a twenty-year smoker’s voice would be. It’s oddly pleasant, like the tunes of an instrument playing something in low notes. She gestures at Shiro and Pidge, and Keith tries not to dart forward at the move, desperately hoping that she’s not the bow-and-arrow equivalent of trigger happy. “Where do these two want to take me?”

Keith immediately takes back whatever poetic bullshit he just thought about her voice. He does _not_ like the authoritative tone one bit.

Shiro tilts his head slightly, giving Keith another warning look that’s not hard to interpret; _stop being stubborn and answer the damn question._

Keith glowers at the girl, body still wired and tense, ready to move at a moment’s notice to take her down as soon as there’s an opening. “The bridge.” He answers curtly.

“See?” Pidge exclaims in irate exasperation. “We weren’t lying. We just want to –”

The girl clicks her tongue and Pidge cuts herself off. The girl steps forward a beat faster than the two are walking, just enough that the metal (shit, those are _sharp_ ) points of her arrows are visible from Shiro and Pidge’s periphery. “I don’t care what you _said.”_

“Look,” Shiro says calmly, placating, as if he’s not being threatened with a goddamned _arrow_ that could go right through his spine. He and Pidge and the girl slow to a stop once they’re a few metres in front of Keith. “We don’t want any trouble. We just want to talk. You appeared on our ship, out of the blue, in our friend’s room. You can’t fault us for being cautious.”

Keith is the only one to see the girl narrow her eyes suspiciously at the back of Shiro’s head. Shiro is watching Keith, looking for any sign from Keith’s face that she’s about to let loose on that arrow, but Keith doesn’t let his focus drift as he watches the girl closely, trying to hard not to see Lance’s face in hers, so confused as to _why_ that’s happening in the first place.

The girl takes a few steps back, and that’s when Keith moves. He darts between Shiro and Pidge, standing in front of them protectively, luxite blade held aloft and ready to attack at the slightest hint of provocation from the girl. She lifts her bow and arrow(s) a little higher, both now trained solely on Keith, but he doesn’t care as he levels a furious glare at her for threatening his friends.

Shiro puts his human hand on Keith’s shoulder, stilling him before he can leap forward and attack the girl. Pidge stands at Keith’s elbow, not even hiding her disgruntlement as she folds her arms over her chest and glowers at the girl. He notices that some of the anger has bled out into intent curiosity, as if Pidge is staring down a puzzle and trying to figure out what pieces are missing when she doesn’t even know what they looked like.

Before anything more can be said, the bridge doors finally open (he was wondering when the others would come out, knowing they must be watching the altercation through the hallways security cameras), and Allura and Hunk step through. He figures Coran stays behind to keep watch of the Castle’s systems and surveillance. The girl tenses and her arm pulls on the bowstring a little tighter, eyes darting over Allura and Hunk coming up to stand behind him.

As soon as the girl’s eyes land on Hunk, they widen with shock. She blinks owlishly once, twice, lowering the bow just a bit as she exclaims in a startled voice, “Hunk?”

Keith doesn’t know how he gets any more wired than he does at the moment, muscles practically screaming for him to move, but he keeps his stand in front of the others, protecting them. Shiro shifts forward a little so he’s level with him. Keith only glances back to see Hunk’s look of total confusion. He must be seeing the uncanny similarities between this girl and Lance, too.

Hunk nods warily. “Uhm. Yeah.”

“Who are you?” Allura demands in a firm, unyielding voice as she steps up to stand on Pidge’s side. “How did you get into the Castle?”

The girl stares blankly at Allura. Her eyes flicker from Allura’s ears, to her pink Altean markings, to her white hair (why the hell are the mice still on Allura’s shoulders?), before going back to her lilac-turquoise eyes. She frowns a little, as if she’s not quite sure who she’s looking at. Then, completely dismissing Allura in two seconds flat, the girl focuses back on Hunk. Keith notes, with some surprise, that she hasn’t pulled her bow up in defence yet, even though it remains trained on Keith’s chest.

“You’re –” the girl shakes her head slightly, a strange, small smile that is _so much like Lance’s_ curling her lips up. “You’re Hunk, right?”

Hunk glances nervously at Allura’s indignant face at being so blatantly disregarded. He looks as if he’s worried Allura will snap at him because the girl is completely ignoring her. He must be really out of sorts with Lance’s capture if he could think Allura would do that.

He gulps before looking back at the girl. “Do I know you? You look really familiar,” that’s a diplomatic way of putting it. “But I –I’m sure I haven’t seen you before?”

He doesn’t sound quite so sure.

The girl seems to think so too, because she snorts derisively. “If you’re Hunk Garett, then yeah, I should.”

“Your ears,” Pidge interjects, because this is the perfect situation to do so. “You have pointy ears.”

The girl frowns. She nods at Allura. “So does she. You don’t see me asking any questions.”

That settles it. Whatever type of alien this girl is, she’s clearly not Altean or a hybrid (somehow. If Keith’s half-Galra, he’s not putting faith in Coran and Allura’s insinuation that Altea hybrids couldn’t have survived the fall of Altea). She’s a weirdly humanoid alien they’ve never encountered before.

Who looks too much like Lance.

Keith can’t get over that. He’s starting to wonder if his desperation to see Lance, alive and well and _home,_ is making him see Lance in strangers. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s tried to see someone he wants to in other people.

“Yeah,” Pidge acquiesces. “But she’s Altean.”

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?” the girl asks bluntly. It’s only then that he notices she has a strangely familiar lilt to the way she speaks, accent rolling her ‘r’s and flattening the vowels. He can’t quite think of where he’s heard such an accent before, though.

“Uh, kind of? She’s Princess Allura?”

The girl continues to look wholly indifferent of the fact.

“Of Altea?” Pidge tries again, more uncertain this time. Keith’s got to give her credit for being persistent.

The girl lifts the bow and arrow, and Keith tenses again, though he has no idea what he can do when he’s got two blades that don’t quite reach the girl, while she’s got a literal weapon that can kill someone in under two seconds, with the right aim, from over fifty metres away.

But she doesn’t shoot the arrows still nocked in her bow. Instead, she uses the arrows to point first at Shiro, then Pidge.

“I know he is Takashi Shirogane, pilot of the failed Kerberos mission of two years ago. I know you look like Matthew Holt, who was on the same mission, though you’re a lot smaller.”

“Matt?” Pidge starts, taking half a step forward, before Shiro’s hand on her shoulder stops her. “How do you –”

She ignores Pidge and nods at Hunk. “I know he is Hunk Garret, Lance’s best friend. And you,” she points an arrow at him, and Keith notices how she’s using the arrows to point at those she doesn’t seem to trust one bit, while she nodded at Hunk, because she knows of him, somehow, thanks to Lance. “Are Keith Kogane, Lance’s self-proclaimed rival.” She lifts the arrow to where Allura stands. “I don’t know who you are.”

Then she does something Keith completely isn’t expecting, considering her hostile attitude of literally ten seconds ago. She lowers her bow, unstringing one arrow and swiftly sticking it back in the quiver full of arrows strapped to her back. She watches them warily as she leaves the remaining arrow nocked on the bow, pointed at the ground, but Keith suspects, from how expertly she holds the bow, how strong she must be to pull that tight bowstring back, that she can have any one of them pinned down in two seconds flat if they so much as twitch in a way she doesn’t like.

“The only thing that I can see that connects all of you to me is Lance. That is the only reason I’m not shooting those blades you have out of your hands,” she adds, giving Keith a hard look.

Keith’s upper lip curls derisively. “Who says you could?”

She might have lowered her weapon, but Keith’s not about to do the same. Not when she looks so much like Lance but not at the same time. Not when she appeared out of nowhere without setting off any alarms in the castle. Not when she marched Shiro and Pidge down the halls with an arrow at each of their backs. Not when she still has waves of enmity and distrust coming off of her.

Shiro, however, has a different idea.

“Keith,” he murmurs softly, putting a hand on Keith’s shoulder to calm him, lowering his head just enough that he can be heard, but only by Keith. “Put down your blade. Nothing’s going to be achieved if we’re all threatening each other.”

Keith scowls. “She appeared out of nowhere, Shiro, just when Lance –” he cuts himself off, unable to continue that thread of thought around the lump in his throat.

Shiro sighs, a sound laden with all the words he can’t say out loud because he’s the leader, supposed to show strength and reliability to the others when they can’t for themselves. “Whoever she is, she’s not going to trust us enough to talk if you’re pointing a sword at her all the time. Besides, there’s six of us, including Coran, against one of her.”

Keith’s eyes flicker to the side to meet Shiro’s briefly. “Is that what you’re going to say when Allura asks why she took you _and_ Pidge down so quickly?”

“Very funny.” Shiro mutters, a tiny tick of the lips his only true thought. He nods at Keith’s hands clenched around the handles of his luxite blade and bayard. “Put it down, Keith. We have to be the first to make the move. Let’s hear her out.”

Keith doesn’t want to. Putting his dagger away means leaving himself unprotected. Putting it away means leaving his friends defenceless, because the girl is certainly isn’t stowing her fucking weapon away, either, and none of his friends have their own bayards out, or Allura her staff. If the girl decides to let loose, someone could get hurt, or even die.

He doesn’t want to let anyone else get taken from him again.

But he can’t deny that Shiro has a point. They’re at a stand-off; the girl has already made a sign of calling truce by putting away the one arrow, even if it’s only one. If they’re going to get anywhere with this intruder situation, in figuring out who she is and what her connection to Lance is, and then getting on with _finding_ Lance, something has to give.

Carefully, slowly, so that Shiro as much as the girl will see, he deliberately lowers his Marmora blade. He doesn’t sheathe it, he’s not quite there yet, but he does keep its deadly sharpened end aimed at the ground, just as her arrow is. The girl watches his every minute move with those penetrating, electric blue eyes, every line of her body held taught like the bowstring she pulls.

Then, in equally as slow and measured movements, she lowers the bow. She removes the arrow and puts it to join the rest in its quiver, before she pulls her bow over her head and snaps the bowstring across her chest over the leather strap of the quiver. After her bow is settled, she flicks her wrist in an easy, practiced move, and a silver dagger with a curved blade appears in her hand. She may have put the bow away, but it doesn’t mean she trusts them.

The movement, however, has Keith’s eye catching on something that sets his blood boiling in fury –the girl is wearing a necklace.

_Lance’s necklace._

“Why are you wearing Lance’s necklace?” he growls, shifting his luxite blade to his left hand while his other draws his bayard from his hip. It immediately activates at his touch and transforms into his trusted sword. He might not be as perfect as he wants to be at dual-wielding (yet), but he’ll be damned if he lets this girl parade around in _Lance’s_ necklace.

The girl immediately tenses at the sudden appearance of his bayard, another identical dagger appearing in her other hand in a second as she grips both tight, watching him like a caged leopard waiting to pounce at the slightest provocation.

“Keith,” Shiro mumbles warningly, hand tightening on Keith’s shoulder.

“No, Shiro,” he shrugs his hand off his shoulder and jerks his chin in the direction of the girl, watching Keith closely with eyes narrowed to slits, one hand still clutching a dagger coming up to cover the necklace. “That necklace belongs to _Lance._ You’ve seen him wear it.”

Before Shiro can answer, the girl speaks again.

“How do you know him?”

Keith frowns. “Lance?”

She nods tersely.

“I’m –” he falters for a brief moment at that before rolling his shoulders a little. “We’re his friends.”

The girl’s expression doesn’t change as she regards him stolidly, but her lips thin to an almost invisible line. For a long few minutes, the group watches her as she warily eyes them, searching for something, though none of them are sure what. Her hands tighten imperceptibly around her daggers before she sighs a little. With another flick of her wrist, one of them disappears.

She reaches up and pulls the necklace over her head, dangling it in front of her for all of them to see. Keith blinks in surprise, lowering his weapons just a bit, when she reaches into her bag and pulls out a _second_ necklace, identical to the first, both bearing Lance’s family sigil as a pendant. However, the difference between the two is that the one she was wearing is silver, while Lance’s is gold.

“This,” she lifts her pinkie around one of the leather cords of the necklace, lifting up the silver pendant. “Is mine. It was made for me when I was sixteen. This,” she lifts her forefinger, pulling up the gold pendant. “Is Lance’s. It was made for him when he was sixteen.”

Something clicks in Keith’s head then, but it’s a whisper, a hint, smoky in his mind as he tries to grasp at it but fails to as it slips between his fingers.

“That does not answer who you are, or how you came here.” Allura says severely, her every word harsh and sharp as the arrows in the girl’s quiver. Even Keith inwardly quails. “You are aboard _my_ ship, unsanctioned and uninvited, threatening the lives of _my_ Paladins, when we have made no move to harm yours. Now you will answer me; who are you?”

Keith begrudgingly gives the girl credit for holding her own as she stares Allura down from her spot several paces ahead of them, safely out of reach from any weapons that might appear pointed in her direction. Allura is more than a little intense when it comes to Voltron, but now she looks ready to send a bolt of her pink quintessence-fuelled lightning at the girl.

The girl cocks an eyebrow, a lazily smile on her lips, a complete turnaround to her defensive scowl so far. Keith’s stomach _sinks_ at how familiar the look is; how _wrong_ it is to see that self-confident smile on anyone else’s face than Lance’s. Her gaze drifts over the others, lingering on Hunk’s and Shiro’s for a moment longer than the rest, before looking at Allura again. Her lips twitch to the side, like a rabbit.

“Fair enough, even though I have no idea what you mean by ‘my ship’.” She sighs, fitting her necklace back over her head and stuffing Lance’s in her bag. The second dagger re-emerges in her free hand. “But first, answer _my_ question, then I’ll tell you who I am. Deal?”

Allura is silent for a moment, considering the girl’s offer.

The girl sighs. “What, do you want to remain at an impasse until one of us drops dead?” she twirls her dagger between her fingers, and Keith’s almost jealous by how expertly she does that without even nicking a finger. She lifts the dagger and points its blade at Allura. “I don’t have time for that.”

Allura purses her lips. With a curt nod, she says, “What is your question?”

The girl motions around the hallway with her dagger. “Where am I?”

Of all things, no one expected her to ask _that_ question. They all glance at each other, Keith to Pidge, who lifts her shoulders in a definite, _Don’t look at me, I don’t know what’s happening_ gesture. Shiro and Allura look to each other, Shiro’s brows furrowed, Allura absolutely bewildered. Then Allura glances back at Hunk, who is equally as lost as everyone else. Allura tilts her head in the girl’s direction while looking at Hunk, clearly beckoning him to answer her, since she, for some reason, identified him by name over everyone else and seems to trust him a smidgen more than anyone else.

Hunk shuffles from foot to foot nervously. “In the Castle of Lions?”

“Castle of what.”

“The Castle of Lions,” Pidge reiterates sharply. “In space? Obviously?”

The girl stares blankly at her for a solid minute, body frozen, totally unmoving. It’s like she’s become a statue. Keith can’t quite tell if she’s surprised, or shocked, or confused, or if it’s a mix of all three. He thought his poker face was good, but he’s got nothing on the clean slate of her expression. It’s only when Shiro steps forward to stand by Keith’s side that she moves, taking a step back to mimic his movement, still wary of them all.

“Space.” She deadpans.

“Yep.”

“I’m in _space.”_

“We’ve established that.” Pidge replies bluntly.

“How?”

Her question cements Keith’s belief that there’s something seriously wrong going on here, as if the bow and arrow aren’t enough, as if her mentioning the Kerberos mission and the still-missing Matt Holt wasn’t enough. But that can be explained away easily; perhaps she is, somehow, affiliated with the Galra, and knows about Kerberos and the Holts because of that. This girl is an alien –she has to be. There’s no way a human could have made it all this way, and certainly not just _appeared_ in the Castle, more heavily fortified than a Galra battlecruiser. Plus, the ears are kind of a giveaway.

But why, then? Why is she acting like being in space is a big deal? What does she have to gain by pretending like this?

Pidge sighs heavily. “It is a very long story involving giant robotic lions that are more than a little sentient, questionable aliens with suspicious motives more than half the times, and…just, basically a lot of aliens. Including genocidal purple furries.”

The girl wrinkles her nose. “That sounds like the beginning of a bad space opera.”

Hunk shrugs at that. “You’re not wrong.” Then he realizes what she just said. “Wait, you know what a space opera is?”

“I’m not a heathen.” The girl looks mildly offended at the insinuation that she doesn’t.

But that’s not the point. How the hell does an alien know what a space opera is if that’s a _human_ term?

“Okay, that doesn’t matter right now. You’ve got your answer,” Pidge interrupts irritably. She crosses her arms and steps forward, ignoring Keith’s muttered word of warning to stay behind him “Now you’re gonna tell us who the hell you are, and how you know Lance, and how you got here before we tell you anything more. _You’re_ the one intruding here, and it is _basic fucking manners_ to _properly_ introduce yourself _before_ you start shoving goddamn arrows from the fucking stone age in people’s faces when they _politely_ ask you to come with them to get shit explained.”

Shiro doesn’t even call Pidge out on her language. Maybe because he agrees with her on every point, minus all the swearing, and honestly, Pidge looks like she’s about to rain hellfire if her questions aren’t answered. The girl’s eyes have widened slightly at the vehemence behind Pidge’s words. She doesn’t loosen her grip on her daggers, but slowly, she nods.

But before another word can be said, a Lion’s roar tears through the halls. The roar has Keith’s blood pumping hard in his veins, heart leaping into a rapid tattoo against his ribcage as the bellow tapers off into an audible growl that echoes all around them. Everyone freezes at the sound, and Hunk jumps almost a whole foot into the air in surprise before he can help himself.

Allura looks off in the direction of the hangars, her mouth forming soundless words as her eyebrows shoot up and wrinkle in bafflement. She glances at Shiro, who shakes his head –he doesn’t know what just happened, _why_ it happened, either.

The girl starts so violently at the sound of the roar rippling through the air that she almost loses her grip on her daggers, eyes blowing wide as her mouth pops open in a small ‘o’ of surprise. She lifts her blades higher, to defend herself, and her gaze jumps from each of them, as if she’s trying to find the source of the incredible roar from them.

Pidge immediately brings up her small tablet before the sound is even over, pulling up live footage from the security cameras in the Lions’ hangars. Keith looks down over her shoulder, a Lion filling five squares on the screen. He notes that Red is sitting hunched low, as if prepared to spring forward and attack someone. When he sends out a questioning probe to her, she sends one right back at him, like she doesn’t understand why her sister is acting up like this. Black stands tall and proud, unmoving as she looks out over at her sister. Yellow and Green are in the same positions as they had been when Lance teleported them to the hangars, sitting up straight, even though they’re both turned to Blue’s direction.

Blue, who’s sitting forward in a low crouch, growls coming from her before she lifts her head, and a second roar rips through the hangars, filling every room and hall of the Castle. He can feel it, her anguished cry. He can feel it in his bones, burrowing deep, tattooing itself inside him so that he can never forget the sound. He can feel it in the way the floor beneath him shakes from the force of it.

“What the hell?” Pidge mutters, tapping at the screen to pan the video out to show the entire hangar instead of just five screens with each Lion in them.

There’s no one there. The hangar is completely devoid of any humanoid life. A little log Pidge pulls up shows that the last people in the hangars was two hours ago, being them before they’d left for the bridge to reconvene.

“What was that?” the girl whispers, pale, pupils dilated so much so that her eyes are have gone black, a thin ring of blue surrounding them. He sends her only a cursory glance to make sure she hasn’t moved, and he’s not entirely sure she will at all when he sees how scared she is, a surprisingly human look on her distinctly pixie-like face. _“What the hell was that?”_

Shiro makes a move to answer her, but he’s cut off by Coran bursting through the bridge doors. His moustache is fluffed up and quivering anxiously as he exclaims, “Princess, Shiro, the Blue Lion is –”

“Yes, yes,” Allura waves away that report, already knowing. Coran nods shakily at her before handing her a tablet that shows an identical video to the one playing out on Pidge’s tablet. “We can hear her. Can you tell what’s wrong?” she flicks her finger across the screen and running page of Altean script appears. “Is it Lan –”

Keith catches a flurry of movement from the corner of his eye, then. He inwardly curses himself for letting his attention go lax and forgetting the girl’s presence. He turns to her, stunned to find her full-on running _towards_ them, her face set in a harsh mask of steely grit. Her feet barely seem to touch the ground as she runs, so much so that she looks like she’s flying rather than running.

Hunk turns around from Coran at the same time as Keith does. His eyes widen when he sees the girl running at them. “Wait, what’re you –”

He doesn’t get any more out after that. In one second, the girl disappears from sight in a cloud of shimmering golden smoke that engulfs her entire form, collapsing in on itself like a dying star and taking her with it.

A foot on his back is all the warning he gets before he is unceremoniously shoved to the ground. He catches himself just in time to keep from face planting on the floor, glancing back with a furious shout on the tip of his tongue when he sees the girl landing on her feet after a perfect air flip. She spins around and flings her dagger at Pidge. His stomach falls to the ground so fast he feels nauseas as he watches the dagger cut through the air too fast for him to stop it –but instead of impaling Pidge anywhere on her body, the dagger tears through her shirt and sinks into the wall, effectively pinning Pidge in place.

Keith already has a hold on bayard, his luxite blade having skittered too far away for him to get to it fast enough. He scrambles to his feet, intent on engaging the girl and stopping her from hurting any of his friends, but she is _fast_. Faster than any opponent he’s ever come across. Before he can make a move to her, the girl has yanked Hunk’s headband over his eyes and shoved him back in much the same way she did Keith, sending him sprawling on the ground with a yelp of pain.

She catches Shiro off-guard, too. Shiro, who spends almost more time in the training room than Keith does, on account of the nightmares and worry that keep him up late into the night, late enough that he doesn’t see the point in going to bed anyways. Shiro’s Galra arm has lit up, and he swings it at the girl in an upper-cut punch, but she lifts her own arm to stop his with the leather guard on her forearm.

Shiro’s eyes widen in surprise when his arm doesn’t burn through the leather, and she uses his momentary distraction to grip his glowing arm with hands covered in the same shimmering golden substance that she disappeared into. With a strength that should be impossible from her thin frame, she _throws_ Shiro over her shoulder, sending him crashing right into Hunk trying to stand up. Hunk has only managed to push his headband off just enough above his eyes that he sees Shiro being launched at him, and shouts when they’re both sent tumbling back to the ground.

Allura wastes no time. Her staff appears in her hand, and Keith doesn’t have time to question where the hell it came from before Allura cuts through the air with the staff. The girl ducks the blow that could very nearly have taken her head off, and swiftly springs to her feet. A split-second later she’s bending backward, her hands planted securely on the floor as her legs kick up with a fluidity and grace that speaks to years of training. Her foot catches Allura’s wrist, hard enough that Allura lets go of her staff with a pained cry, staggering back as Coran pulls her away by her shoulder to avoid any more hits.

The girl flips backward smoothly, landing on her feet as she gives them all a flat stare, like she’s inspecting her handiwork. Hunk groans on the floor from the double blow of being kicked there and having Shiro’s substantial weight thrown on him. Shiro pushes himself to his feet, rubbing at his arm as if it hurts. Pidge is futilely pulling at dagger embedded through her shirt and into the wall, deep enough that she can’t quite manage it on her own. Allura and Coran regard the girl warily, waiting for her to make her next move.

Keith meets the girl’s eyes, and they hold contact for a moment. He is the only one left with a weapon and still standing after the girl’s surprise attack. He has his hands on his bayard, ready to lash back at her, and she knows he’s fast from how quick he recovered from her kick to his back. The fury in his eyes must tell her he’ll fight her with no holds barred, because as he starts forward, instead of readying herself, she turns on her heel and disappears in another cloud of gold dust.

Keith blinks stupidly for a moment, whirling around on his feet as his mind scrambles to understand what just happened. He spins around in a full circle before he sees her at the end of the hall, reappearing in more gold mist that floats around her like she’s a faerie conjuring pixie dust to mask her presence. She doesn’t miss a beat as she starts forward, sprinting away from them, headed straight –

Keith pales. She’s going to the hangars.

He doesn’t think about how she disappeared in a way so uncannily like Lance’s ability to blink. He doesn’t look back to check that his team are all right, that none of them are too hurt. His reaction is instantaneous as soon as he spots her after her disappearing-reappearing act; he runs after her, ignoring the calls of his teammates as they come to the same realization he did a second after him.

They run through the halls, the girl far ahead of him, running so fast even with the weight of her arrows at her back and the messenger bag on her hip, while Keith tries hard to close the distance between them, to reach her before she can get to the hangars. He doesn’t know why she’s going there, he doesn’t know who she is and why she appeared in Lance’s room right when he disappeared, he doesn’t know why Blue keeps on roaring, like she’s _trying_ to bring attention to herself. All he knows is that he has to get to the hangars before the girl. He has to stop her reaching them before she can.

He doesn’t.

As soon as he turns the last corner to the hangars, the girl vanishes in more gold dust before reappearing in front of the hangar doors. She slams her hand down on the console in the wall next to the doors, and he feels his heart sink when they slide open for her. They’re not –they’re not supposed to do that for anyone except the Paladins, and Allura, and Coran. She doesn’t even look back to see how close he is to catching up to her before she leaps forward.

Keith makes it to the door, running straight in, just in time to see the girl come to a staggering stop in front of Blue’s particle shield, staring up at it. He’s moving before he’s even really aware of it, heart pounding in his chest, blood rushing so loud in his head that he can’t hear beyond it, like waterfalls crashing over him. His sword is at her throat in an instant, pressing just hard enough that if she moves, she’ll paint her neck with a widely grinning red smile.

She doesn’t even look like she’s aware of how close to death she is with his blade at her exposed neck. She just stares up at Blue, slack-jawed, eyes bugging out, a breath of astounded awe breezing out of her lips.

“If you don’t want to die,” he growls, his voice coming out low to keep his haggard breathing hidden. “Step away from the Blue Lion.”

She acts like she doesn’t hear a single word he says. He glances down when he hears a loud clattering, eyebrows crinkling in confusion to see that she’s dropped her daggers.

_The hell…?_

“Keith!” Shiro shouts. “Be careful!”

He doesn’t look back when he hears Shiro, or the sounds of the others bursting into the hangar, coming to a stop a few paces behind him and the girl. He doesn’t hear anything beyond the thundering of his heart beating hard as he stares at the girl’s profile, his gut roiling nauseatingly when he sees Lance’s sharp chin in hers, his pointy nose in hers, his angled cheekbones in hers, his longer hair curling at his temples in the few hairs escaping her tight ponytail and coiling around her temples.

And then she speaks.

“You’re Blue,” she breathes in an awed whisper. “You’re the one he found, aren’t you?”

Keith’s hand clenches around the hilt of his bayard. He doesn’t like how familiarly she’s talking about Blue, _to_ Blue. Only Lance gets to talk to his Lion like that. Only Lance. “I said, get away from the Blue Lion, _now.”_

The girl looks at him then, turning her head slightly, and he struggles to keep from going slack-jawed at the tears glimmering in eyes that are fading from amber golden to lightning blue. Her bottom lip trembles ever so slightly, and there are tear tracks on her cheeks, glistening like silver streams as they catch the fluorescent lights in the hangar.

“He was here,” she tells him, as if he’s supposed to instinctively understand what she’s talking about. “She knows. She can tell me. Please, let me know.”

If anyone were to ask why he did what he did next, Keith will say the only reason he did it is because of the bewilderment at her words. He’ll say he was confused. He will not openly admit that a strange nostalgia floods him to the brim when he sees the heartbroken look on her face, the pleading in her words as she quietly begs him to let her know. Know what, _he_ doesn’t know.

He will not admit that he sees the lost look in her eyes reminds him of the disorienting maze he tries to navigate in his own mind, a maze that sprang into existence when he realized Lance wasn’t in Blue, Lance wasn’t in the Castle, Lance was captured, Lance is _with the Galra._ A maze he tries to make his way through, only to come to a dead-end at every turn, nowhere to go, no way to know what’s happening to Lance, no idea how to find him, to help him, to bring him back home.

His body moves almost on its own as he shifts his sword an inch to the right, just enough to give her breathing room, to make small movements, but not enough to run away or fight back. Gratitude fills her eyes as she nods thankfully at him, before she turns back to Blue, looking at the Lion through the solid particle barrier that separates Blue from everything and everyone.

Slowly, she lifts her hands, wracked with fine tremors. Her hands, Keith notes absently, are calloused from handling weapons. He would know. His hands are the same.

“He,” she whispers, her voice the quiet rustle of leaves blowing in the wind. She places her hands on the barrier, as if it is a fine thing, made of fragile glass, breakable at the slightest push. “He did this. And he said…”

Everyone –except Keith, who fights to keep his face as expressionless as possible –gasps in surprise when the particle barrier melts away at her touch, in a way it only ever does for Lance. Through the mess of emotions his head is reeling in, he dimly wonders if he is the only one who hears the splintering of his heart when the girl smiles _Lance’s_ smile, pearly white teeth showing, lips tucked up at the corners that give him –no, _her,_ this isn’t Lance –an impish look. She looks relieved, but that ease is overshadowed by something heavier, darker, something he can’t put a name to.

“He said,” she continues quietly. “He said to you, ‘what’s up, mi niña bella?’”

And the Spanish sounds so right on her lips, so _like_ her in a way he doesn’t understand, so like _Lance_ in a way he does, that he wants to curl up in a ball and cry because it’s too much. This is too much –she’s too much.

She’s too much like Lance, and Lance isn’t _here._

Before anyone can do anything, before the rest of the team can rush forward, before Keith can put his sword up and stop her, the girl steps in, and the particle barrier rises up behind her, an impenetrable shield with her on the inside, and everyone else stuck watching in dumfounded shock as she walks toward Blue without so much as a glance back.

The rest of the team come to stand by Keith, Shiro on his left, Pidge on his right, Hunk on her right, Allura on Shiro’s free side, Coran on hers. No one can utter a word as they watch the girl come to a stop in front of Blue, who lowers her head with a low, sad grumble, just enough that when the girl stretches her hand up, she can touch Blue’s nose.

They watch as a haze of blue, shimmering like a cloud dust of stars, rises up from Blue and drifts over to the girl.

They watch as Blue’s quintessence touches the girl’s hand.

They hear her gasp.

They see her head snap up higher, to stare into Blue’s eyes that look down on her.

They watch her legs tremble before she buckles and crumples to the ground, her hands flying to her mouth as she muffles a sob that they can all still hear, a bitter, gut-wrenching sound that seems almost torn out of the girl’s chest. More of Blue’s quintessence floats over the girl’s head, surrounding her in a loose circle, not quite touching, but close enough that it’s easy to guess that this is how Blue is talking to the girl, how the Lion speaks to one who isn’t a Paladin, isn’t _her_ Paladin.

Half a minute later, a broken cry is wrenched out of the girl, and they all jerk in surprise at the sudden, raw shout that follows.

“He’s been through enough!” she yells, leaping to her feet, her hands clenched in fists at her sides that glow gold. “He can’t –he can’t be –this can’t be happening,” she groans, her hands loosening as she reaches up and shoves them so roughly through her hair that she completely dislodges the tie keeping the ponytail up, sending her hair falling over her shaking shoulders in a thick golden-brown cascade of wild curls, silver and golden beads in her braids clinking as they brush against each other.

Blue makes another audible grumble, so sad that Keith’s sure his heart is filled with lead at this point, it weighs so heavy in his chest. The blue glimmering quintessence floats around the girl’s head. She presses the back of her hand to her lips to muffle whatever she replies, only lowering her hand to step forward and press her forehead to Blue’s nose.

He doesn’t know why, but he glances away at this. For some reason, the move is tender, vulnerable, a moment shared between the Blue Lion and the strange girl, a moment that shouldn’t be looked upon by anyone else. When he looks to his teammates, they all seem to be thinking the same thing as they look to one another, eyes asking questions, mouths remaining silent because no one has answers.

“What is –what is she doing?” Hunk stammers, he sounds so worried, biting his nails fretfully as he looks to Allura and Shiro for answers they don’t have. For a second, Keith thinks he’s talking about the girl.

Then Pidge continues, her voice suspiciously thick, “Why is Blue talking to her?”

Keith finds himself feeling genuinely sorry for Shiro –being their leader means trying to find and give answers in impossible situations like this, when he’s scrambling around to understand what’s going on just as much as they all are.

Allura puts a calming hand on Pidge’s shoulder, even though her eyes remain focused on the strange exchange within the particle barrier. “Don’t worry, Pidge –this isn’t Blue accepting her as a Paladin.”

“Yes,” Coran murmurs. “She’s…I think the Blue Lion is telling her something. She’s _talking_ to her.”

Everyone quietens down when the girl steps back from Blue, tipping her head to look into the Lion’s glowing yellow eyes, a smile of such infinite sorrow on her lips. Then she turns around, and starts walking slowly back to them. By the time she reaches the particle barrier, Blue lets it down, each hexagonal piece breaking apart. The girl steps forward, and the barrier immediately goes back up again, leaving the girl to face the four remaining Paladins, Allura, and Coran.

Her eyes are dull where they had been animated with emotion, even despite her perfect poker face. The bouncing curls of her hair shifting over her shoulders are the only vibrant thing about her now. Her lips are pressed in a flat line as she lifts her gaze from the floor to them, looking at each of them in turn. She lingers on Keith for a moment longer than the others, and he doesn’t know what the strange look in her eye means as she flits her attention away from him to Allura and Shiro.

She breathes in deeply, as if gathering strength to perform and arduous task.

“Blue –the Blue Lion –she told me everything. I’m sorry,” she says softly. She gestures at them, Pidge’s torn shirt, Allura’s wrist cradled to her chest, Shiro’s deactivated Galra arm, Hunk’s headband knocked askew in his dark brown hair. “For threatening you, and attacking you. I didn’t –I just –I just want to find my brother.”

Pin.

Drop.

Silence.

Paladins-of-Voltron.exe has ceased functioning.

The chips in everyone’s brains are broken. Malfunctioning. Spiralling into a chasm of perplexed disillusionment from complete and total failure to understand. You can use the sharpest blade to cut through the silence that befalls the hangar, and it will seal right back up, no sign it was ever broken. Overwhelming dismay plays out on their faces as they stare at the girl.

Allura and Coran stare at the girl with identical astonishment on their faces. Neither know what to say to her, even as she looks back at them with numbness.

The scar across Shiro’s nose wrinkles a little as his eyebrows shoot up right to the white tuft of his hair flopping over his forehead, mouth opening and closing in total stupefaction. He couldn’t say anything if he tried, and if he did, it would be absolute gibberish falling out of him.

Hunk, he looks like sudden realization has smacked him upside the head with a metal bat, right alongside the sickly green shade he turns that hints at the all-consuming powerlessness he feels at being unable to do anything to stop Lance from sacrificing himself.

Keith?

He pushes past the surprise.

He pushes past it, and digs around in his brain, searching through his memories, trying to remember all the many, many times Lance has talked about his family. He has a big family, this Keith knows. Big enough that Keith can’t remember all their names, though he knows that Lance calls his father Papa, and his mother Mami, and does so unashamedly, not in the least bit ever concerned that anyone would tease him for calling his parents such seemingly childish terms.

Keith remembers being impressed by that, and wondering what it would be like to have parents to call like that, to speak their names with such fondness and love like Lance does. Keith remembers wondering if he would miss Earth more if he had even one little thing he felt tied enough to want to return to.

But he can’t –he can’t remember Lance’s siblings’ names. He knows there are three, but he can’t recall what their _names_ are. He can, but he’s mixing them up with the names of all the cousins and nieces and nephews and aunts and uncles and even family friends in the stories Lance likes to tell of all the weird shenanigans his family gets embroiled in.

Pidge is the first one to break the silence. Her ever curious mind –always hungry for more information, new information, anything –quite possibly being the only one capable of breaking it. “You’re what now?”

No one adds on to her question. Her words are adequate enough to convey their hectic, whorling thoughts.

The girl nods, slowly, wearily, ears flicking back against her head.

 _She’s tired,_ Keith realizes belatedly, a little stunned by the fact.

She was so filled with fire, even as she gave them deadpan looks. Now, now he can see the dark bags under her eyes, the muted light of those electric irises that sends shivers down his spine. There’s a bruise just fading on her cheekbone, and a recently healed cut on her bottom lip. Faint traces of dirt are smeared across her face, and when Keith glances down at her arms, he sees the same on them. Her skin isn’t just an incredibly light shade of brown –she’s pale, almost deathly pale. Keith doesn’t know if it’s because of what Blue’s just told her, or something else entirely.

“Oh my god,” Hunk breathes, a hand coming up to his mouth. “You’re –you’re _Allie.”_

“Yes,” she agrees, and Keith forces his scattered attention back to her, even as it blitzes at her next words. “My name is Alyssa McClain. Lance is my twin brother.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I rewrote this chapter (more like the middle-to-end of it) three times before I felt comfortable with it. What do you think of Allie? Any thoughts on her strange appearance? How are you finding Keith? And all the others? I'm a little nervous about how I'm handling the team...writing fics in an established world is so very different to writing original stories...
> 
> Also, thank you [Mattresssama](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mattresssama/pseuds/Mattresssama) for providing the Spanish in this chapter! Mi niña bella means 'my beautiful girl'. I'll try to keep the Spanish to a not-overwhelming-overload like in the first fic because that is a headache for you, I know. I'm sorry.
> 
> [Wattpad](https://www.wattpad.com/user/azurehyn) || [Tumblr](https://www.azurehyn.tumblr.com)


	5. this young man (he'll die fair soon)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allie + Pidge = recipe for disaster for everyone involved.
> 
> Lance's first meeting with something that's not a droid isn't what he expects.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just wanted to quickly say, I know some of you don't like Allie because of the a little violent way she acted when meeting the team, and I know she's an OC character and those are tricky AF in fics, but please do give her a chance. There are legitimate reasons behind the way she's behaving, all (most) of which shall be revealed before chapter 10. She's an OC character, which means I took SO MANY LIBERTIES with her, and usually with me that means the character has gone through some utter fuckery. 
> 
> (Seriously, I have no chill.)
> 
> Oh yeah, and heads-up, when I update chapters, it'll most likely be on Saturdays so it coincides with me updating my story on Wattpad, because I have truly shitty memory, and it took me MONTHS to remember to update on Saturdays -I am not about to go through that again by choosing another day to update this fic.

“Blue told me everything. From the moment you found her in the cave on Earth, and how none of you have contacted your families because you don’t want to risk the Galra finding Earth. She told me how you got to Arus, how Lance protected Coran from the explosion by ‘fake Rover’. When Blue was stolen by that Nyma chick. All the battles you’ve fought against this emperor, this Zarkon. Lance taking the hit from that ion canon for you. Lance breaking his Seal and telling you that he’s a Witch. She told me all of it.”

No one can look Allie in the eye as she lists out to them just a few of the things that have happened in the last year since they were pulled into this intergalactic war spanning thousands of years, as she lists to them just a few of the things Lance has done for them. The silence that follows her words sits like a boulder in Keith’s stomach as he keeps his eyes firmly planted on the floor, doing everything he can to ignore the guilty looks on everyone else’s faces.

After Allie told them her name, and that she’s Lance’s sister –his _twin sister,_ how the fuck did Lance never mention he has a _twin sister?_ All Hunk knew was that she’s his older sister, not _twin,_ and Hunk was supposed to know Lance better than them _–_ they all headed to the common room, seeing it as the best place to listen to what Allie has to say to them.

(Translation; they all need to sit down, a bit weak in the knees from the shitstorm they’ve unknowingly gotten themselves entangled in.)

Everyone but Keith is scattered somewhere on the couches. Allie is sitting in the middle, with Hunk beside her. (But not too close. Everyone is more than a little wary of the very many little knives in her leather braces, plus the suspiciously absent daggers, _and_ the arrows. Don’t forget the arrows.) Pidge is next to Coran and has a laptop balanced on her knees, clacking away at it so fast that Keith wonders if she’s actually paying attention to them. Shiro sits on the empty couch on Allie’s right, with Keith standing right behind him.

Allura and Coran are on the couch to Allie’s left, both tense enough to possibly break a bone if something startles them. Coran is on a tablet, reading through Altean script that scrolls up quickly over the screen before irritably flicking it away and bringing up even more script that sometimes looks Galran. Allura has a tablet clutched in her hands, screen blank with only the occasional flashing green dot on the upper right corner to show an alert, set primly on her knees pressed together. She would be the picture of perfect poise, if not for how obviously worried she looks.

Keith can’t bring himself to stop staring at Allie, amazed by how much like Lance she looks. Logically, he knows that that’s the thing about twins, especially identical twins –they look _identical._ And that’s obviously what Allie and Lance are; but it doesn’t explain her odd appearance, the ears, the freaking bow and arrow, and how she single-handedly took down all four of them, with Allura and her freakish Altean strength. Keith thought Allie was an alien at first, and Lance certainly doesn’t look like that. He looks _human._

So, despite being identical twins, why the hell does Allie look like an elf when Lance is very clearly human (one with powers, but human nonetheless)?

The Castle continues to steer them through space, in an uninhabited solar system far enough out of the possibility of Galra detection that they needn’t worry about that one thing, at least. For now, anyways. As she talks, Allie’s gaze flicks over to the glass that separates them from the stars burning and dying outside. She can’t seem to keep her eyes from looking out at them every so often, and whenever she does this, Keith has to remind himself that this is her first time in space.

The fact that she doesn’t bounce around in excited glee, like a kid set loose in a candy or toy store, the way Lance did just reminds him that even though they look the same, Allie isn’t Lance. She’s not him. She can’t –she won’t replace him, in any way.

And that only makes his skin itch with the need to get moving when he thinks of what Lance might be going through at that exact moment while they’re sitting around, talking. Pidge and Coran, at least, have already started on trying to track the Galra cruiser that was on Ladene. He overheard Pidge saying that they’ll need to go back to Ladene to retrieve the data chip in the distress signal, or at least what remains of it, so that she can get the identification marker of the cruiser. Keith figures that the only reason Allie isn’t peering over their shoulder and pestering them about starting to find Lance (as she’d started to on the walk here) is because they occasionally spout very weird techno-babble at each other that only Hunk seems to understand.

Hunk has a small device in his hand, something Coran gave him and told him tracks the galactic positioning system of the Paladins’ armour and helmets. The screen of the device is blank, only giving out random lines of coded text that Hunk keeps flicking away as he pries open the back of the device and prods at the intricate circuitry there with an Altean screwdriver, sighing heavily each time he twists something in the circuit board to look at the screen but not finding what he wants. An occasional spark zips from the device, but Hunk merely blows at his fingers for a second or two before returning to poking at the thing blue and white wires inlaid on a black circuit board.

Keith’s stomach sinks when he realizes Hunk is trying to pinpoint Lance’s helmet’s location by recalibrating the device every which way he can, and failing at every turn. He wonders if it has something to do with however the Galra managed to cut off their connection to the Lions back in the cave.

Keith wishes he could do something, like Coran and Hunk and Pidge are, but he’s not a techie. He’ll end up breaking a computer from sheer frustration instead of breaking code, so he has to settle for _talking._ But then again, he knows that this is important, too. Allie appeared out of nowhere, in Lance’s room, just when he was captured. Allie, his _twin sister,_ for fuck’s sake.

Keith is more likely to believe someone telling him that Earth’s sun rises from the north than he is to believe that Allie’s showing up in the Castle at that timing is mere coincidence.

Shiro is the first to break the ensuing silence.

“Do you blame us?”

Her ears flick back against her head, mostly hidden by the mane of curls tumbling down her shoulders and back. She returns his intent look with a level gaze of her own, pursing her lips before answering.

“I want to. My brother would not be with those Galra if not for you. I want to, but I don’t blame you.” She sighs lightly, a bare hint to the leaden look in her eyes. “Lance has…there are things that have happened to him, to us, that have made him the way he is now. I blame that on what’s happening.”

“I am sorry,” Allura says, at the same time as Pidge asks distractedly, “What things?”

A very faint tick of her lips is the only sign to her amusement at Allura and Pidge, before even that fades away, to be replaced with melancholy. She leans forward, bracing her elbows on her knees as she laces her fingers together and regards Shiro.

“What Blue did not tell me is exactly how much Lance told _you,_ about being a Witch. Before I answer you, I need to know how much Lance has said.” She says, speaking in slightly more formal tones than any of them are used to hearing from anyone besides Allura and Coran.

Keith wonders if it’s because she didn’t go to the Garrison with Lance. He remembers Hunk mentioning to Shiro, after the whole King-Lykonark-Speaking-Spanish debacle, that Lance had worked incredibly hard to suppress his Cuban accent so that he’d fit in better. It had clearly worked, since he spoke with such an authentic American accent that no one on the team had even known Lance spoke Spanish to begin with, until Xyphelia. Hunk is the only one who had an inkling of an idea that Lance knew Spanish, but he clearly didn’t realize that it’s his mother tongue.

It seems Lance being a Witch isn’t the only thing he kept from them. Pidge had to pull up Lance’s Garrison records that she still had downloaded on her laptop (along with Hunk’s) after they were teamed together in class (something she did in secret, and Keith only knew about it because he caught her, but didn’t stop her because he was curious himself) for them to find out that Lance was born in Cuba, and raised there, until he joined the Garrison when he was sixteen.

It disturbs Keith how much Lance has been able to keep from them. It makes him wonder how much more they don’t know about Lance. It makes him wonder if Lance used his magic to keep all this information from the mind-meld exercises Allura makes them all do every couple of weeks.

Shiro frowns. “Not much, honestly.”

“Yes,” Allura agrees. “We were so busy with the Xyphelians and securing the alliance and their entering the Coalition, and then Ladene’s false distress signal. We didn’t have time to ask more.”

Allie’s lips twitch. “So…all you know is that he’s a Witch.”

Everyone nods, although Cora, Hunk, and Pidge remain fixed on their work. No one faults them for not paying attention.

“Then I can’t –I won’t tell you any more, either.”

“What?” Allura asks, frowning. “You ‘won’t’ tell us? What do you mean?”

Allie straightens, raising her hands in defence. “Look, I know you want answers, and I will give them to you. But _after_ we get my brother back.”

“Why can’t you tell us now?” Keith asks shortly, uncaring for the curtness of his tone. His patience at his own uselessness is wearing him thin.

Allie, to her credit, doesn’t look offended. She looks sorry. “Because there are things we have been through –things Lance has been through –that I will not talk about without him here. It is for him to decide if he wants to tell you.”

“Why wouldn’t he want to tell us?” Hunk asks quietly, avoiding anyone’s eyes by keeping his fixed on the device that emits a sharp beep before falling silent again. “We’re his friends. We’re space family.” His voice warbles at the end. “We just want to help.”

Keith gives him a shrewd look; ever since Allie revealed herself to be Lance’s brother, he’s noticed that Hunk is a little more settled, even though he’s nowhere near how he is when Lance is beside him. Keith can’t decide if it’s a good thing that Hunk’s not quite so anxious with her here. Yeah, he knows it’s always a good thing for Hunk’s anxiety to be in control, but he doesn’t like that it’s because of Allie. It almost makes him feel like since Allie’s there to help somewhat, even unknowingly, Lance won’t need to do it anymore.

Keith absolutely hates that the thought even crosses his mind.

Allie gives Hunk a sad smile. “I know. But it is still his call to make. I can’t –I can’t do that to my brother, tell you things he might not want to share with you. I won’t betray his trust like that.”

Keith wants to be angry at her stubbornness, but her last words give him pause. When she puts it that way, he can understand. If Shiro had taken it upon himself to tell everyone that Keith was half Galra after the Blade of Marmora’s trials instead of letting Keith tell them on his own, he doesn’t think he’d be able to ever trust Shiro with anything ever again.

But what she says sends a shiver of unease traipsing down his spine, like fingers dipped in ice-cold waters are tip-toeing their way down. She hasn’t said anything, hasn’t even really hinted at anything, but what she has said makes it sound like whatever it is she and Lance have ‘been through’, it’s bad. Really bad.

Keith warily eyes the arrows, the hilts of the small knives in her leather braces. Whatever it is, it’s bad enough that she carries some serious weapons on her. He is curious about her choice of weaponry, though. Why not a gun? Who uses bows and arrows as actual weapons for self-defence and fighting anymore, on Earth at least, outside of movies and books?

“All right,” Shiro warily accedes, glancing at Allura, who gives him an acquiescing smile. “We’ll respect your wishes.”

“Thank you.” She nods gratefully at him.

“Can you at least tell us why Lance didn’t come back with us?” Hunk asks hopefully.

“Because he broke his Seal on our nineteenth birthday.” She replies in a blunt tone. At their blank faces, she continues with only a faint trace of exasperation. “The sixteenth and nineteenth birthdays of Witches are very important for us, for reasons I will explain later. For a couple of weeks after each birthday, our magic is very…unstable, because of that. Normally, Lance is a strong Witch –but the problem is that Lance broke his Seal literally _on_ his nineteenth birthday, which makes the fluctuations with his magic even more sporadic and unstable.”

“What does that mean, exactly?” Shiro asks.

“It means that one day, you can be strong enough to teleport five giant mechanical Lions and their pilots from the surface of a planet to just outside its atmosphere. The next, you can’t even blink to a few paces in front of you.” Allie’s eyes harden a little as she looks at all of them. She may say she doesn’t blame them for what happened, but Keith’s not putting much faith in that, not with how protective she’s shown herself to be already. He wouldn’t be nearly as rational if he was in her position. “After stopping that explosion, he already used up most of his magic. Even with Blue’s quintessence, he had to use the last of his magic to teleport all of you.”

“Why didn’t he use her quintessence to teleport himself back?” Allura asks, sitting forward a little, always eager to learn more about the Lions her father built.

Allie shakes her head. “Witches can’t use another’s energy to do something like that, on himself. He’d have to use his own magic to teleport back, and he didn’t have any left, and he won’t until he can rest and replenish it.”

“That doesn’t make sense.” Keith grumbles under his breath, his arms tightening around himself when he remembers the drained, exhausted look on Lance’s face, the blood dribbling down his nose. His heart clenches in his chest, as if a fist of iron has a hold on the stupid organ. In a way, what she says does make sense, but he doesn’t want to admit it. Just because.

Allie smiles thinly at him, almost like she knows why he said that. “A lot of things with magic have bullshit limitations. It’s not all waving hands and solving all your problems, much as Disney and SyFy would have you believe.”

Allura and Coran glance at each other. “Disney and SyFy? Who are these people?”

As Hunk tells them that they’re not people, Keith can’t help but think about how Lance would launch into a full-scale presentation, complete with wild hand gestures, probable snow flurries flung in Keith’s direction just because Lance really likes messing with him, and possible Disney-song renditions, instead of just keeping things to a simple explanation.

His stomach cramps painfully at the thought.

“How come your Seal isn’t doing anything to you?” Hunk asks, pointing out something everyone has overlooked. “I mean, Lance, he…went through that, but you look fine. We saw you blinking, but nothing happened to you. Not that I’d want that,” he quickly adds. “I’m just saying.”

“I get why you would think so,” she says. “But you already know about Witches. Seals, they don’t work on an individual basis. If you tell someone, no other Witch’s Seal is going to work on that one person.” She taps the back of her neck. “My Seal remains unbroken.”

“What about your ears?” Keith asks, unable to really look past that.

She gives him a look. “That, I will explain after we get Lance back. All I will say is that it has to do with our –my sixteenth birthday.”

Keith doesn’t miss the way she says ‘our’, as if she and Lance are so closely joined together by being magical twins that they’re barely individual from one another.

“What more can you tell us?” Allura asks. “We are billions of light-years from Earth. That is where you were, correct?” Allie nods. “So how can you be here now? Why did you appear in Lance’s room, out of nowhere?”

Allie reaches into her bag, still strapped on her, like she’s expecting to get up and be on the move in any second. She pulls out Lance’s necklace, gripping it tight in her hand for a moment before shaking her head a little and taking off her own necklace. She holds the two identical pendants in the palms of her cupped hands, and everyone shuffles a little closer.

“I am here because of these.”

Pidge, who’d moved closer to get a better look, pushes her glasses up her nose with a quizzical frown on her face. “I don’t get it.”

“Indeed,” Coran murmurs. “They look like ordinary Earth metals to me.”

“They are,” Allie agrees. “Kind of. Gold and silver are highly conductive metals for magic. But, that’s not the point,” she closes her hands on the pendants and puts them in her lap as she looks out at them. “Again, I’ll explain more about them when we get Lance back, but for now, all I can tell you is that these necklaces connect me to him, though not by much. His necklace is connected to mine, more like, through a spell our parents performed. They’re primary function is to protect him.”

“Not you?” Pidge asks, noting the specific wording of her words.

She shakes her head. “I don’t need it.”

 _Because that clearly makes so much sense,_ Keith thinks irritably.

“All right,” Shiro nods to show his understanding, shooting Keith a warning look, as if he can almost touch the annoyance emanating from Keith’s very being. “So the necklace is what brought you here? How?”

“Must be some strong magic if it pulled you all the way out here,” Hunk comments, glancing at Allie’s fisted hands before looking back at her, waiting for her answer.

“We’re not anywhere near Earth right now.” Keith puts in when she doesn’t answer immediately. “Haven’t been for a long time now. How did they get you here?”

She purses her lips. “These pendants, they’re a –a way for me to help my brother. When he needs me, I can talk to him, telepathically, with the help of the necklaces, but only if we’re close enough. But…” she trails off uncertainly, looking back out at the glittering stars.

Her pause has Allura leaning forward slightly, eager to hear her answer. Pidge looks up from her screen again with a deeper frown. “But what?”

Allie hesitates before speaking, staring down at her hands. “I was in Eastern Havana barely an hour ago when my pendant started glowing, and it got so hot I could not even touch it. Then, two seconds later, I found myself in Lance’s bedroom here.”

She pauses again, and this time, Keith audibly sighs in frustration, uncrossing his arms and leaning his hands down on the back of the couch. “That doesn’t explain how you’re here. We don’t have _time_ to sit here _talking_ if you’re not going to.”

Shiro gives him another look, one Keith pays no attention to, because he knows he’s right. Even if he can’t do anything like Pidge, and Hunk, and Coran, he can at least take Red out and fly around, maybe bump into some Galra ship and get more info for Pidge to sort through. _Anything_ is better than uselessly sitting around and flapping their mouths while Lance could be trying to survive through god knows what.

Allie seems to be thinking along the same lines as Keith, because even though her mouth visibly tightens in irritation, whether at his sharp voice or the whole situation, she continues. “The pendants have never physically moved me from where I am to where he is –or rather, where his pendant is. My brother and I, we have been countries apart, and when he needed me, the most I could do was talk to him.”

Allura and Shiro frown at the same time, glancing at each other. It is Coran who asks the question they’re all thinking.

“What’s different about this time?” he asks, moustache quivering as he talks, but not quite so animatedly as it typically does when he’s in his usual blindingly bright spirits.

Allie glances at him, then looks away, back to the stars. Keith watches her closely at that. All the times before when she looked at the stars, there was a level of awe and astonishment in them, overshadowed by her worry for Lance, but still strong enough for them to momentarily brighten her eyes as she looked at the glittering stars birthing and dying in the distance, seemingly so close to touch, yet still so far away.

This time, Keith sees fear flash across her eyes. Unadulterated, pure _fear_ that looks so much like how Lance did at the picture of the Ladenian. Her lower lip trembles slightly, hands clenching tighter around the pendants hidden in her fists, her entire body lined with break-neck tension.

“My brother is in trouble.” She replies quietly, not looking at any of them as she talks. “What’s different this time is that my brother is in trouble. I’m his last defence mechanism, and whatever’s happening now, it’s enough that the pendants pulled me from Earth to outer space to help him.”

Pidge’s rapid typing stops. The ensuing guilty silence weighs heavily on everyone present. Hunk’s shoulders slump as he caves in, looking like he wants to curl himself into a small enough ball that he’ll cease to exist. Shiro sits with his back ramrod straight, hands opening and closing in fists tight enough that spasms of tension run up and down his human arm while his Galra arm has a very faint, almost ethereal purple tinge to it. Allura and Coran look to each other, and Keith can see it in their eyes, the heavy, dark storms in them, that they’re remembering the destruction of their home planet, the deaths of their entire species, at the hands of those who have Lance now.

There are knives in Keith’s lungs. Every time he tries to breathe in, they press closer, tearing holes into him, and when he breathes out, they slice and dice until all that’s left is meaty ribbons with filtered air fluttering them about. Keith tries to breathe past the knives in his lungs, the spikes in his throat, even when all he wants to do is run away to somewhere where this crippling need to find Lance and bring him home isn’t dragging him under a tidal wave he can’t escape.

“Why didn’t he ever mention you?” Hunk asks quietly, looking up and gripping the device tight enough in his hands that Keith is genuinely worried it will break in half. Hunk has underestimated his strength on numerous occasions. “I mean, I know you two are close, and that you’re the older sister Allie he always talked about, but why didn’t he ever say you two are _twins?_ I’ve known Lance since we joined the Garrison, and not once did he ever show me a picture of you or anything. We only talked on the phone, _once,_ and that was over Lance’s singing.”

An unnameable sadness steals into Allie’s eyes as she shifts her gaze from Hunk to the stars beyond. “We are close,” she admits. “And that might be the problem.”

Allura frowns. “I don’t understand.”

“I’ve been there to see him in ways that he would rather no one know about.” Allie replies softly. “I was there for him when he was at his worst –and maybe that’s why he feels guilty talking about me. I was there for the good times, but I was also there for the bad times. Maybe talking about me reminds him of the bad more than the good.”

Pidge looks up from her computer, glasses glinting from the bright light reflecting back on the lenses from the screen. “Can you track Lance with your pendant?”

A flicker of hope, like a candle flame wavering in the wind, dangerous, lights in him.

“I will try,” the flame strengthens, still tenuous. “But because he is not wearing his pendant, it will be difficult. Like searching for a strand of hair in all of space.”

The wind blows the fire out, and Keith is engulfed in cold again.

“Jesus,” Hunk breathes out shakily.

“So they’re like homing devices, or signals, right?” Pidge clarifies earnestly. “You’ll sense where the _pendant_ is, and not Lance himself.”

Allie nods wearily. She may have known Pidge for a grand total of thirty minutes, but she’s at least smart enough to know that when Pidge looks like this, light brown eyes sharp, brows pulled dangerously low, bags sitting under her eyes, glasses pushed high up her nose so they don’t bother her by slipping down when she’s working, hands gripping the edges of her laptop so tight her knuckles go white –when she’s like this, you don’t face Pidge head-on. You run in the direction she wants you to while she measures your speed in kilometres.

“Then what _can_ you do?” she asks tightly. “If you can’t track Lance, and the pendant brought you here because you’re supposed to help find him, what can you do? I get it, he’s your brother, your twin brother, but we don’t have time to mollycoddle you when you just appeared out of nowhere right when he was taken, and you won’t even tell us anything.”

Something dangerous flashes in Allie’s eyes. Keith has the urge to go for his luxite blade, tucked safely in its sheathe at his hip.

“I am not here for you to _mollycoddle_ me,” Allie snaps, her voice is just barely not a snarl, sitting at the edge of the couch, enough that Keith knows she can spring up and lash out in half a second if she wants to. “I am here to find my brother. If I think anything I know will help to bring him back, I will tell you.” She looks around to each and every one of them, holding their gazes for long enough that they can see a rage they don’t recognize burning in her eyes. “Do not insult me by thinking I will hold back information that could help me find him, and do not underestimate what I have done and what I will do for my brother, and my family.”

“Then why the fuck won’t you just –”

“Okay,” Shiro interrupts staidly. He rises from his seat, his hands held out in front of him in a placating manner as Pidge and Allie glare daggers at each other. “We’re all running on high tensions right now. I think we need to take a step back and _calm down.”_

He gives Allie a pointed look, as if totally unaware of all her knives and the forest of arrows at her back, and another identical look is aimed at Pidge, who slumps, grumbling irritably under her breath as she returns to practically stabbing the keyboard.

Keith blinks in surprise when Allie actually backs down, shooting Pidge one last belligerent look as she scoots back on the couch, a visible show of letting it go. The move has Keith’s hands easing their impossibly tight grip on the couch. He glances at Shiro; the Dad Voice is surprisingly effective, even on practical strangers.

(Keith refuses to think that Allie might not be a stranger when she’s Lance’s twin sister.)

“I have told you all I can.” Allie says firmly, her voice gentler than before, but her eyes betray the steel still in her. “But I need to know something.”

Shiro nods for her to continue, though he remains standing, as if prepared to physically step into another confrontation that may arise from ‘high tensions’. “Go on. What is it?”

“Blue told me that Lance was afraid of going down to that planet he was –he was captured on. Lad –Ladna –?”

“Ladene?” Allura supplies. “It is called Ladene, an ice planet. It is the only inhabited planet in this quadrant of the galaxy.”

Allie blinks at her for a second, at a total loss to how to respond to that, bringing to light again that she hasn’t been in space with them for the last year. She’s only been here for barely an hour.

Finally, she nods slowly. “Yeah, that. Blue told me he didn’t want to go, but she does not know why. Lance wouldn’t tell her. Did he say anything to you?”

Everyone is almost surprised at the mention of Lance’s adverse reaction to the picture of the Ladenian. In the chaos of all that happened after it, it took a backseat in their minds, overridden by the nearly consuming need to get Lance back.

Hunk shakes his head, a consternated look on his face. “No, he didn’t. When he saw the picture of what the Ladenians look like, he just freaked and ran to his room, and he wouldn’t come back out.”

Allie frowns. “Can I see it? The picture.”

“Ah, yes,” Coran stands, tablet in hand as he taps at it a few times. “Here it is.” He flips the tablet round and holds it out for her to see.

Barely a moment after she lays eyes on the image, Allie jerks back, as if the Ladenian might physically leap out of the tablet and attack her. Her pupils blow wide, hair shifting over her shoulders as her ears flatten sharply against her head, lips curling up in a silent snarl. Everyone startles, Pidge almost dropping her laptop to the ground and Hunk half-shrieking in surprise, when, between one second and the next, Allie is on her feet in a defensive stance behind the couch she was sitting on just moments ago.

“The Beast _,”_ she hisses. In this moment, with her pupils swallowing up the blue, face tight, bared teeth, and those ears, she looks more animal than human. “You can’t be –are you saying there is an entire _planet_ of him?”

↭§↭

The droid hands Lance over to a squadron (more like five) of Galra soldiers waiting just outside the door to his cell. The droid quite literally bodily hands him over to the soldier at the front, because he can’t make his legs work for a minute (or five) after the last wonderfully enlightening electrotherapy session with the droid’s button. It takes the droid shocking him four more times before he finally acquiesces and follows its order –he may be stubborn and petty as hell, but he’s not stupid. Any more of those electric shocks and his heart could just…give out.

Okay. Considering how many shocks he did have to receive before common sense kicked in like a raging bull knocking down a wooden fence, he might be a little stupid. Just a little.

Apparently enough to matter, though, since he struggles to keep himself upright, muscles cramping and threatening to seize with every other step. The soldiers gather around with him in the centre, each Galra taking a corner of their walking square, while the remaining fifth walks just behind Lance. It makes it hard to walk, his knees jerking out and making him stumble every few steps. The Galra soldiers pushing him forward clearly don’t care for any physical agony he may be in as he is constantly prodded at in the back with the nuzzle of a blaster aimed right in the middle of his spine.

One shot, and he can be paralyzed, if not killed instantly.

Lance tries to keep his whines and complains to a minimum the first time he’s so rudely shoved in the back with a blaster by a possibly trigger-happy Galra after he comes to that nauseating realization. If –if he gets out of this, alive, he doesn’t want to come out of it as physically broken as his mind is.

 ** _:wouldn’t that be funny:_** the voices chitter, pushing and nudging at their mental door, testing its strength, his patience. **_:a paladin who can’t walk a paladin who can’t stand a paladin who can’t pilot their lion a paladin who can’t aim a paladin who can’t shoot a paladin who can’t use the fucking toilet without inconveniencing someone else who needs a useless paladin like that:_**

Despite his best efforts, the words get to him. They wiggle inside him, like worms burrowing deep into the wet, damp earth. Only in this equation, he is the earth, and the worms keep digging deeper and deeper into him, finding holes and chinks in his armour that they eat through like termites on wood. His flesh crawls just at the mere touch of the voices insidious words twisting deep inside him without the buffer of his necklace.

Without the necklace, without the pendant itself, he’s not sure how long he’ll be able to keep a lid on the voices. Especially when they’ve slowly been getting stronger as it is, out here in space, with the empty silence of millions of galaxies revolving in their own ways, ignorant of everything outside, uncaring for anything unconnected.

As the Galra soldiers silently lead him down the halls to who knows where, he wonders if his heart stopping from repeated electrocution isn’t the easiest way out of this. At least then he wouldn’t have probable torture to look forward to. At least then he wouldn’t have to worry about the voices breaking out and taking control. At least then he wouldn’t lug around the weight of the expectations and hopes and dreams and fears of millions and billions of people in the entire universe on his shoulders, just waiting for him to help take down Zarkon and the Galra empire when he can barely stand on his own two feet without the crushing weight yanking him right back down –

The soldiers come to an abrupt halt, so unexpectedly that Lance stumbles into the one in front of him before he can stop himself. The soldier simply pushes him back, and he shuffles unsteadily on his feet to keep from falling over. He didn’t even notice how far they walked to get here, what turns they made, if there were other soldiers marching down the halls. He’s about to say something, gods know what, his brain is still a little fried, when the door they’ve stopped at slides open to reveal yet another Galra, a guard, probably. He nods at the head of Lance’s esteemed entourage before stepping back, allowing them to herd Lance into the room within.

Lance honestly does consider resisting, shoving back against the Galra behind him.

Then he remembers the blaster at his back. And the soldier at the front, who took the electrocuting button from the droid when they got him.

Again; Lance may be a little stupid, but only a little.

Until he sees the chains hanging from the ceiling, the blood-stained walls with actual _handprints_ smeared on the dried red cracking on the walls like paint, but it’s _blood._ The floor is wet with it, coupled with water and the smell of urine and faeces left untended for the gods know how long. The same lights that illuminate the entire length of the ship brighten the horror show of the room within. The overpowering stink of all the blood invades his nose and he gags, bile rising up at the back of his throat as the thick stench coats his tongue and makes his brain reel with an intense bout of dizziness that has his knees threatening to send him falling to the ground again.

He almost does. Fall, that is. He would have, if not for the two guards at either side of him latching on to his arms, their grip punishingly tight as they pull him forward. He wants to fight against them, but his stomach rolls like a bowl of water sitting in a boat that rocks violently to and fro from the force of a storm whipping up about it. He’s sure that if he moves too much, he’ll puke.

His throat burns enough from how much he vomited after the third electric shock.

He settles for defiance via dead weight. He makes his body go totally lax, heavy as he can make himself, legs dragging behind him as if he’s lost all sensation in them. The guards carrying him grunt in surprise at the sudden change, and he allows himself a smile. It’s quickly wiped away when the guards simply readjust their grip and hold him tight enough that he’s sure there will be Galra-hand-shaped bruises flowering on the skin of his upper arms.

It doesn’t take long for them to undo the electricity-inducing cuffs, momentarily freeing his hands. He doesn’t even get to enjoy the brief respite before the guard on the left yanks his arm up, swiftly securing his stinging wrist in the manacle dangling from the end of the chain whose end is securely bolted to the ceiling. The guard on his right does the same with his other hand, and even though he wiggles like a slippery fish, as much as he possibly can with what little energy he has, it does nothing to deter the guards from chaining him.

They jerk and pull at him so hard and so much that by the end of it, the toes of his boots barely brush the wet floor, the muscles in his arms straining from the stretch. After that, one guard grabs his foot and pulls it to the side, fixing another thick metal cuff around his ankle, while the other guard does the same with his other foot, pulling it in the other direction, until he’s hovering in the air, spread-eagled and completely at their mercy.

They don’t even give him ten seconds to adjust to the new, highly uncomfortable position he feels the zipper at the back of his flight suit being roughly pushed down, the sound of the fetters unlocking almost painfully loud to his ears. The Galra standing guard in front of him, watching the proceeds, has a completely blank face as his eyes widen.

“Hey, come on now,” he says in mock exasperation. His voice comes out a little too weak and hoarse for its intended effect. “If you wanted to get me out of my clothes, all you had to do was ask.” He throws in a nice, big, lecherous leer for good measure. He’s creeped out every single sibling, cousin, niece, and nephew with that malign simper enough times to know it _works._

But apparently, Galra aren’t human. Apparently. As if the seven-foot-tall hulking purple bodies and occasional furry ears (and tail) wasn’t tell-tale enough of the fact.

“I’ve gotta admit,” he tries again. “I’m not really digging the cuffs, y’know?”

The guard doesn’t even blink.

His heart thuds hard in his chest, like a runaway train, when the back of his flight suit is pushed open to expose his back. The sound of metal sliding out of a sheathe has him twisting back, trying to see, but a large purple hand come up and forces his head to face front. Goose flesh creeps over his skin and he gulps when he hears and _feels_ the material of his flight suit being ripped open at the sleeves, until all that’s left of the top half of it is what flutters in torn strips at his narrow waist.

Great. He’s completely exposed from the waist up. He does _not_ like where this is going.

The Galra in front of him steps away once that’s done, and he hears the sound of heavy boots walking away. Half a second later the heavy door slides shut with a resounding thud, and he’s left alone in the…gods, is this a _torture_ room?

It must be. It would certainly explain all the blood painting the walls and slicking the floor. Half of him is glad he can’t really put his feet on that floor –the other half is busy cursing the first half, because he’s sure that he’s arms might get pulled out of their sockets from how he dangles from the ceiling by the chains like the carcass of a slaughtered animal propped up on a meat hook.

He doesn’t know what’s happening, but he takes the chance that being left unattended gives him and tips his head back squinting through the purple lights up at the ceiling. He gives the chains an experimental tug. There’s no way he can somehow pull the chains down enough to dislodge them –they’re drilled into big squares of stone that are fastened to the ceiling. Same goes for the chains around his ankles when he tries bending his leg toward him. If he tries to pull any of the chains out, he’s more likely to either,

  1. A) break his wrists.
  2. B) tear his shoulder out from its socket.
  3. C) sprain and/or break his ankle, which will make running a bit difficult.



He’s not at all fond of any of those options, thanks.

“Greetings, Blue Paladin,” a soft voice speaks, from somewhere behind him.

His skin jumps off his bones, heart thundering in his chest as the chains rattle when he jerks from surprise. He twists his head back, peering through the gloom behind him, trying to make out who it is there. A shape melts from the shadows formed by the walls behind him, stepping forward into the purple light. Lance’s blood runs colder than Ladene’s winters when he sees the brown robes fluttering around silent feet, hands hidden in the opposite sleeves that extend far beyond fingertips, the white bone mask with six glowing yellow slits.

Druid.

He wants to cry. Fuck it all, Lance wants to _cry._

Give him a Galra, let them torture him, he’ll find a way to stand it and stay strong. But a _Druid?_ A goddamn _Druid?_ It was Druids that took Shiro’s arm and experimented on him. It is Druids that the prisoners from planets Voltron has liberated that tell horror stories of the atrocious, ceaseless curiosity of the Druids, of the way they torture and experiment on different species to see what makes them tick.

Quite literally, Lance thinks Druids are the worst thing to ever exist, right next to the Beast. And that is saying a lot, that he puts the Druids on the same rank as the Beast, after everything Lance has been through at the claws of the Beast. Sure, Lance is prone to exaggeration with his tall tales –but not with something like this.

Never with something like this.

Even the voices, suspiciously, have fallen silent at the presence of a Druid in the same room as him. They have literally never been quiet on their own, not unless Lance shoved them behind the door, and he’s too drained to do that now. It’s almost like they’re…scared?

Lance. Is. So. Fucked.

The only sound the Druid makes as it walks around to come stand in front of him is the rustle of its robes brushing against the wet floor. Lance tries to move, to squirm away from the miasmic aura that emanates from the Druid, his skin crawling just at being in the same room with it. All he succeeds in doing is rattling the chains and making the links clink against each other in a painfully loud sound that bangs around the walls of the room that suddenly seems too small, much too small to house both Lance and a _Druid._

The Druid makes no comment on Lance’s wriggling, only watching him. With the bone mask in place, Lance can’t tell what expression is on its face, or what look is in its eyes as it watches Lance impassively. He’s not sure he wants to know what’s beneath the mask (what creature had to die to make that mask?), even despite the intense malaise at looking at someone with a genuinely terrifying mask like the Druid’s seem to favour.

Eventually Lance gives up, dangling from the chains, hands curled into tight fists to hide their shaking as he tips his head back, still looking at the Druid, but trying to lean as far back from it as he possibly can, under the circumstances. He keeps his mouth shut as he watches the Druid watching him, not even bothering with the pretence of his own emotional mask, trying to play off his fear with jokes.

The Druid can probably sense his fear, anyways.

The bone mask dips down, in what he thinks is a nod, before lifting back up. Even though he can’t see its eyes, he’s certain the Druid is looking straight at him.

“What you did on Ladene,” it speaks in the same sotto voce as before. Goosebumps creep over his skin. “That was very impressive, Blue Paladin. Stopping an explosion of that magnitude is quite a feat.”

A wave of unease goes through him at that. For the first time, Lance curses that he broke his Seal. He’d used his powers and magic before, several times in the year since he joined the fight against the Galran empire. The only reason the Galra, including Haggar and her Druids, hadn’t known about that is because his Seal’s magic worked on all species that saw him do magic, and consequently altered their memories to delete that bit of information from their minds.

Now, though.

His Seal is broken. If anyone sees him doing magic now, they’ll remember, because his Seal doesn’t work anymore. It’s just a tattoo on the back of his neck now.

Lance would shrug nonchalantly, if he could, to downplay his disquiet at the reminder of his broken Seal. As it is, all he manages is a faint uplift of his shoulders that has the tendons in his arms twinging in protest. “What can I say? You Galra are tenacious, even when you’re knocked down.”

The Druid continues as if Lance hadn’t said a thing. It steps forward, closer, and the chains jerk as Lance tries to bodily tip himself back further, away from it.

“Imagine how my interest was piqued when I saw what you did through the eyes of the Galra soldiers you killed. That kind of power,” Lance has to bite down hard on his bottom lip to keep any sounds from coming out of him when the Druid lifts one scaly claw and drags it down the side of his face. It presses down not hard enough to break skin, but hard enough for him to know it can. “Is not something commonly attributed to the human species.”

The Druid takes a step back, and a bubble of something pops in Lance’s chest when he feels like he has some space back to himself. He isn’t even aware he was holding his breath until it whooshes out of him in a faint exhale. He can’t even begin to put to words how _wrong_ it is to realize that the Druid was possibly literally watching Lance through the eyes of dead Galra. Can all Druids do that? Every single time the team have to kill someone, a Galra, even when they don’t want to, is it possible that Druids are watching their every move that way?

That is just wrong, and defiling the deceased Galra in ways Lance would never wish on anyone, not even his worst enemy.

 ** _:you think it cares:_** the voices whisper, quiet, so quiet he can barely hear them over the rush of blood to his head. He wonders if it’s because they don’t want the Druid to know they’re there. **_:you think_ morals _and_ principles _are concepts it understands:_**

His upper lip curls derisively at the Druid as he replies, “Oh yeah? And how would you know?”

“The Champion,” the Druid answers simply. “I was a part of the team that conducted tests on him. My brothers and I believed that humans are incapable of housing any modicum of quintessence in their frail bodies based on experimental results of him,” it pauses and leans forward a little, Lance’s breath halting again at the move. “Until now, that is.”

Yeah, no. Lance doesn’t like the sound of that. Not one bit.

The Druid goes on, a strange lilt to its words now. Lance wonders if that note in its voice is…happiness? Oh gods, what the fuck could make a _Druid_ happy?

“You not only kept the explosion in the cave from incinerating the other Paladins and yourself,” it goes on. “But teleported not just the Paladins, but the Voltron Lions as well, all five of them. What I’d like to know, now, is why you did not teleport back with them.”

Lance is both surprised and not by that question. Not, because of course the Druid’s going to want to know how he teleported his friends back when humans are, supposedly to it, ‘not capable of housing quintessence’. Surprised, because… _that’s_ the first thing it wants to know? Not _where_ he teleported the others, but _why_.

Something’s not right about that.

In fact, he notes, something’s not right at all about the fact that the Druid hasn’t asked a single question about the other Paladins, or the Lions, or the Castle, or about Allura, or even of Voltron itself. The Druid is oddly, disturbingly, fixated on _him._ On how _he_ has magic. On how _he_ stopped the explosion. On how _he_ teleported everyone off Ladene.

“Your interest in me is flattering,” he says, not even bothering to disguise his contempt. “But, _I’m_ not interested in chatting. If you’re gonna torture me, just get on with it already.” He rolls his shoulders, already trying to physically brace himself for whatever black Druidic magic might be launched at him.

Nothing comes. The bone mask remains fixed on him, and the weight of unseen eyes bears down on him even as he stares right back at the mask without fear (there’s his own mask for ya. A mask of bravery, to hide the very real fear quaking in his bones).

“‘Torture’?” the Druid echoes curiously. “I am not going to torture you.”

Um.

What.

“Oh yeah?” he rattles the chains. “Then what’s with the kinky set-up?”

“Call it a preview, if you’d like.” The Druid stalks around him until it stands somewhere at his back. Lance hates the horribly exposed feeling he has at how utterly on display he is right now. “Your turn with me will come, Blue Paladin, Lance McClain.”

His face blanks out at that. Great. “Way to be a tease, huh.”

“But for now,” it continues, heedless of his comment. “Commander Radnak is interested in attempting to extract information from you on Voltron. Based on my assessment of you, I doubt he will get very much.”

“How kind of you.”

“After that,” a shiver wracks through his body when the single point of one of the Druid’s claws presses into a knob of his spine, this time digging in hard enough to draw blood. Lance bites his lip again to keep from crying out at the stinging pain. “You will fight in the arena for however long Radnak wants you to. He is eager to see how long a Paladin of Voltron can last, if you can match, or even surpass, the Champion that leads you.”

Lance gulps as he fixes an aimless stare at the wall in front of him. Shit.

All Lance knows about the arena is whispers he’s heard from the prisoners and slaves Voltron rescued, and the occasional mention of the fights that Shiro managed to talk about before he’d clam up about it and no one would push him for more. It’s hard enough for him, leading Voltron against Zarkon, against Haggar, the witch who experimented on him and the emperor whose decree sent him out to the arena. If Shiro’s not ready to talk about what he can remember, no one’s going to push him.

So what he knows isn’t much, but it’s enough for him to know that a Galran arena is right there at the bottom of his bucket list of places to visit.

You know what? Scratch that. It doesn’t even make the list.

“Then Radnak will question you, ask you the normal things. Where is Voltron. Where is the Black Lion. Where is the Blue Lion. Where is the Castle of Lions.” It sounds almost _bored_ by that, as if all that information is of no concern to it.

“You don’t seem too concerned with that,” Lance grits out through clenched teeth.

“Oh, but I’m not.” The Druid removes its claw, but Lance has no relief. It still feels like there’s something pressed to his spine, like an ice pick that’s been driven deep into his skin. The Druid stalks back to stand in front of him, observing. “After Radnak is done with you is when I will have my turn with you. To learn what secrets you oddly adaptable humans hide.”

He will be _fucked_ if he lets this creature know any more about him than what he looks like.

“My friends will come for me,” he snarls at it, the sensation of the cold thing at his back rankling his ire up two dozen notches. “They’ll come for me, and destroy this entire ship with you in it.”

The bone mask cocks to the side. It is a disturbingly bird-like move, like an owl twisting its head around to stare intently at something you can’t see.

“Are you certain of that, Blue Paladin?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What is UP with Lance and Allie's reactions to Ladene? I wonder...also, please tell me what you think of the Druid!
> 
> So this chapter was split between Keith and Lance's POV, but next chapter you can expect to be ALL Lance. Literally just Lance. That's a good thing depending on what your definition of 'good' is, taking into consideration all I've already done to Lance.
> 
> (Yet I claim to love him, funny way of showing it, huh?)
> 
> As always, please do leave a comment telling me what you think! Here's my social media, so y'all can come scream at me about the fact that VOLTRON'S COMING THE FUCK BACK ON MARCH 2ND ER'BODY MARK YO DAMN CALENDARS AND --
> 
> fucken shit, I have to study for the goddamn TOEFL and SAT both on March. 
> 
> NNNNNNASFJDNGSLKJFDG fml.
> 
> [Wattpad](https://www.wattpad.com/user/azurehyn) || [Tumblr](https://www.azurehyn.tumblr.com)
> 
> Also, do you guys want to know what the chapter titles mean? If so, tell me and I'll start putting them up in the...start notes?...from next chapter onwards.


	6. this bleeding heart (is in my hands)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance doesn't know if he can trust the gift the voices give him when all they've ever wanted from him is his ruin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) OH MY HOLYLORD WE'RE AT 200+ KUDOS THANK YOU!!!!
> 
> 2) I LOST MY FUCKING SHIT AND DID NOT RETRIEVE IT FOR HOURS BECAUSE THE BEAUTIFUL MCLANCELOT HERE AND ON [TUMBLR](https://mclancelot.tumblr.com/) MADE [ART FOR THIS FIC](https://mclancelot.tumblr.com/post/170486136431/so-this-is-azurehyns-character-lances-twin)! ART! THAT'S RIGHT BITCHES THERE IS LEGITIMATE ||ART|| FOR THIS FIC!
> 
> *calms down*
> 
> The above, ladies and gentlemen, is but a smidgen of how insane I acted for a few hours after I saw this beautiful work of art. My family, plus my cats, stayed tf away from me until I calmed down. Thank you again for the wonderful art of Allie, mclancelot!!!
> 
> "Oh yeah, before we head on to this chapter," I say as I mop up tears of blood from the floor, "Here are the chapter titles and songs that they're from. From now on I'll just add on what song it's from in case y'all want to check it out, because whhy wouldn't you, my music taste is fantabulous."
> 
> *cranks up the Black Parade to deafening decibels*
> 
> 1\. and i'm afraid (i won't get out alive) - Animal, Neon Trees [Chase Holfelder cover]  
> 2\. am I gonna swim (am i gonna sink) - Will I Make It Out Alive, Tommee Profitt ft. Jessie Early  
> 3\. if i look hard enough (into the setting sun) - Paint It Black, Hidden Citizens  
> 4\. i ran all night and day (i couldn't get away) - Ran, Hidden Citizens  
> 5\. this young man (he'll die fair soon) - This Wild Wild Berry, Sam Lee  
> 6\. this bleeding heart (is in my hands) - Flesh and Bone, Black Math
> 
> You can bet yo ass these chap titles have actual meanings in regards to what happens in the chapter.
> 
> Mira = five paces
> 
> TW: blood, fainting, fighting, although it's all pretty mild here. The real shit, fellas, is coming next chapter (I keep saying this but guys I really mean it, shit's going down next chapter. By the time I started on that, this chapter was 11k+, and that's quite a lot for one chapter already, so I split it in 2).
> 
> Here is 12k of I don’t know what

The same soldiers from before (he thinks) unshackle Lance from the chains that hold him aloft once the Druid sweeps out of the room, dark brown robes fluttering around whatever passes for ankles on its concealed body. They’re completely stone-faced to every word and dirty look he throws in a futile attempt to get a rise out of at least _one_ of them. They force him to change out of his ruined flight suit and into Galra prisoner clothes, some kind of fitting but durable black full-body suit of a material he can’t identify, topped with a loose grey crop-top thing that he’s not entire surely wasn’t originally white. The fabric of both are worn and soft, telling of clothing others before him.

Lance tries not to think about what happened to them that he’s probably wearing what they once did.

As the guards snap a pair of cuffs that warm with the same electric heat as the one he’d woken up with once he’s done changing, this time with his hands in front of him, he wonders if Galra Training Academy also includes a course in Extracting Emotions Out Of Your Soul 101. No, really, Lance is wondering about that. The only Galra he’s ever seen that don’t obviously shy away from emotion (not including Keith, he’s just a…a bundle of emotion who doesn’t even know how to handle that emotion. Lance will never admit to how cute he thinks Keith looks when he laughs at one of Lance’s admittedly stupid jokes, then looks so adorably confused as to _why_ he laughed at it in the first place) or just keep on a blank face 24/7 are either commanders, or those soldiers he saw back at Zarkon’s headquarters when they were rescuing Allura from Zarkon and Haggar’s spindly, clawed hands. Maybe all the others not considered good enough to guard in Central Command actually have their emotions removed?

Lance is rudely interrupted from his nonsensical musings by the sound of cheering. His stomach turns in over itself. It’s faint, but there, he can definitely hear joyful screams and derisive jeers. Kind of like the sound you’d make when you frame your hands around your mouth and emulate the shouting of crowds cheering someone on. He knows –he’s done the same for himself plenty of times, Hunk too, and Pidge when he’s messing with her.

A loud boom reverberates under his feet, and he isn’t even aware he’s stopped walking, frozen, until one of the guards pushes his blaster into Lance’s back, prodding at the spot the Druid’s claw dug into, and prompting him to keep moving forward lest that ability be taken away by a well-aimed shot to the spine. He tries not to remember the sound of the energy beams shooting out of the Robeast that they fought back on the Balmera. He tries not to imagine that the sound he’s heard right now is like that of something very big falling down. Or someone.

He tries not to.

He does anyways.

Lance takes a moment to himself, turning his attention inward, seeking out that familiar feeling in his chest, the presence of his magic. Usually, it’s sort of like an eager puppy jumping up and down when he touches it, acknowledging it. Then it turns into a content cat refusing to budge when he coaxes it into doing what he needs it to do, and only doing so once he gives it incentive of free reign for at least a few moments. It’s difficult to know what the cat will do once it’s out of the bag; one time he let his power out, he nearly levelled a house. Another time, he lit a candle and almost torched his room.

He remembers Allie laughing at him when he told him that, and saying that her magic felt like a hummingbird –always there, always thrumming and moving so fast that when she did use it, her magic spilled out of her in a beautiful burst of gold. Alex had likened his magic to a bear –warm, solid, and perpetually asleep as often as he did (Mami was always complaining that Alex was asleep more than he was awake.) Mattie and Andrea are –were? –too young to metaphorically liken their magic to some animal. All they know is to play, something Lance wishes he could be there to do with them.

Now, as he reaches for his magic, he feels the faintest stir of it, but it’s lethargic, weak, muddled and tired. The cat’s not just asleep, she’s knocked out cold. He needs to rest more, to sleep and eat (a lot, so much, oh gods he’s so hungry, it’s like his stomach is a black hole), if he wants to use his magic anytime soon. If he tries to use it now, what little there is left will eat into his reserve, and Lance knows that if he touches that, even once, he won’t be able to stop using it. It’ll be like a drug and he the addict, and he’ll use it until it’s all dried out.

And when that happens, no amount of rest and food will replenish it. He’ll be lucky to even be alive if that happens.

(He knows. He knows what it’s like to get so addicted to something that _it_ begins to consume you rather than the other way round, until it’s eaten up so much of you that there’s barely anything left, and it’ll try to take that too, because all it knows is to _take,_ to take and take and _take._ )

So magic reserve? No go. He’ll have to rely on his hands, feet, and brain to fight in the arena if he wants to survive.

Unexpectedly, he feels something shift in his chest, unfurling slowly, like the wings of a bird spreading after a long nap. He frowns as he walks to the Galra’s ridiculously long-stepped march, trying to discern the unusual sensation. It doesn’t feel bad, exactly, not really something that doesn’t feel like him, but at the same time it does? Kind of like leaving home for a long time and returning to find the same building, but almost everything inside it is completely different. Changed into something else. Different wallpaper, different carpet, a different set of dirty dishes in the sink waiting to be washed by a different set of hands than the ones that usually do.

The sensation grows, stretching out to touch the sleeping cat of his magic. His foot jerks and he almost falls over in surprise when it feels like something has just lit all his organs on fire, coating them in flames that greedily lick at the underside of his skin. He gasps as his magic yowls, in shock more than surprise as the newold strangefamiliar sensation kicks at it, _jumpstarting it,_ and a flare of incredible blue light laced with traces of gold momentarily blinds him.

It’s like watching your child go from crawling around toothless to being married with children to getting a divorce to lying in a bed eighty years later, old and wrinkled and dying.

It’s like shaving your head bald and watching the hair grow back to a lustrous mane in under two minutes.

It’s like bringing home a rascally little kitten, all thin skin and fragile bones, and taking pictures of it every day, watching its life go by in flash frames that whizz by so fast that one moment it’s a kitten you just rescued from certain death in the dumpsters behind your local supermarket, the next it’s a big, strong, proud cat with a luxurious coat of fur that lifts its nose imperiously at you as you snap its daily picture.

It’s like the engine of a car, dead, then touching it with electrodes and watching it violently sputter to life, hoping and praying, and then jumping in elation when its revving takes hold and it stays alive instead of flopping over like a dead possum again and again.

It’s going from zero to fifty, dead to alive, bleeding to healed, in the span of a minute.

 ** _:you should thank us:_** the words slither across his skin, not like oil slicking his skin, but like deep black velvet whispering over his body, lulling him to sleep. ** _:without us you would be dead long long ago:_**

And then it’s gone, all of it, the voices, the newold strangefamiliar –but in its place is his magic. His magic, swirling inside him, content and waiting for him to touch it and draw it out into the world, and totally unbothered by its own sudden jolt of power

He sluggishly comes to lying face-first on the floor, one of the Galra guards impatiently prodding at his back, the other kneeling down and peering into his face, eyes obscured by his helmet but fanged mouth twisted in a scowl. Once the Galra sees his eyes flutter open, he grabs Lance by the shoulder and roughly yanks him to his feet.

“Ow, ow!” he yelps, voice scratchy like fire actually burned his throat, but still workable. “Don’t damage the goods, fellas. I hear your Commander wants me in one piece.”

The Galra in front of him scoffs while the one at the back laughs derisively. “If you knew his particular…proclivities, you wouldn’t be so proud of the fact.”

Yeah, no, that doesn’t sound good, at all.

Before he can say anything more, the guard in front spins round and starts forward again while the one behind him pushes the blaster into his back prompting him forward. Lance swallows down the prickles of unease the guard’s words inspire in him as he forces his legs to move, one step forward, one step forward, one two one two, left right left right.

The magic in him, somehow, _somefuckinghow_ reinvigorated in a matter of _seconds_ when it’s supposed to take fucking _hours_ and _days,_ purrs comfortingly, reaching out one tendril of gentle energy to stroke against his scared nerves. The move eases him, a little, just enough that he doesn’t dissolve into a drivelling mess of begging for mercy from the guards and asking them to just kill him now so he won’t have to find out what they mean.

The first sign that they’re approaching the arena, beyond the cheering that gets louder with every step and pulse of his heart, is the heat. In all the many halls the Galra soldiers lead (read; shove) him through, the temperature is like in the Castle. It’s flat, not too cold, not too hot, always reminding him that this isn’t fresh air like on Earth, but just filtered oxygen.

They approach an unmarked door manned by two guards, and at first, when a bead of perspiration rolls down his temple, he thinks it’s nervousness, fright, anxiety that has him sweating like a pig rolling on fire. Then he realizes, when the Galra in front of him pushes open a door they’ve stopped at, that the reason he’s sweating is because it is literally, temperature-ally hot.

Before he even has time to think, the door swings open. The blaster at his back disappears, only to be replaced by a large foot planted in the middle of his back. He yelps in equal measures surprise and indignation as he’s kicked forward, and he stumbles and falls to his knees in a large room that is positively _baking._

“Hey, what’s the deal –” he cuts his incensed shout off when he scrambles to his feet and finds himself the focus of dozens of eyes settling on him.

(Some of those eyes happen to range from two to five on a single alien, which only makes their focus on him that much more unnerving.)

For the first time since coming to consciousness on this cursed ship, he sees aliens that aren’t Galra, or whatever the hell that Druid is. The waiting area where the aliens slated to fight in the arena against whatever nightmarish monstrosity waiting for them in the arena is a low-lit room, with aliens of varying size, shape, and colour (and number of eyes, arms, legs, fingers, and _noses_ ). One or two species he thinks he recognizes, but most, he doesn’t.

He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but there aren’t as many aliens here as he’d thought they would be. At most, there’s twenty, scattered about the large room that could easily house fifty, or, at a stretch, even a hundred aliens. He notices, though, that they all steer clear of the door he’s just tumbled through, as if fearing that the next time it opens, one of them will be snatched through and taken to the gods know where. They don’t pay him any mind once the door closes behind him, going back to whatever it is they were doing after giving him a good long wordless stare for another few seconds.

As Lance looks around the room, taking it all in while trying to calm the rapid drumming of his heart, he realizes that this is some kind of small-scale training room. Majority of the room is empty to give space to the aliens, with a long single row of benches pushed up on the right, going all the way up to a nondescript door in the wall on the other side of the windowless room.

Set up against the wall on his left is a wired metal framework that holds a small variety of weapons on it. Most are close-combat weapons; swords, axes, small knives and daggers, a couple of spears with wicked curved blades atop them, freaking ninja sticks (ninjas can’t be universal…right?), and some simple wooden shields that can so easily be broken, it’s not even funny.

Scattered around the room, the aliens stay away from each other as they swing their chosen weapons around in practice moves. There are targets propped on stands around the room, some aliens standing in front of them and flinging their daggers and smaller knives with deadly accuracy. As he warily eyes one particular alien with six arms and pale blue skin expertly twirling two daggers, a spear, a shield, and two scimitars around its body, he decides to stay the fuck away from that alien’s general vicinity –a sentiment clearly shared by all the other aliens, since the area around the blue alien is cleared of other potential victims to those weapons.

“You.”

Lance almost jumps out of his skin at the commanding tone that speaks right behind him. He doesn’t, but he does leap nearly a foot into the air with an embarrassing shriek (that he will deny ever being the source of). He whirls around, fingers clawed at his side, ready to launch something at it. He is visibly thrumming with nervous tension as he curls his fingers into his palm, readying a fist, and stares up at the towering alien standing before him.

The alien, to be perfectly honest, looks like Drax. As in the Guardians-of-the-Galaxy Drax. And by that, he means the Marvel comics and movies alien Drax, not the real-life guardians of the _universe,_ who happen to be Voltron, and all human (and half a furry, and Lance will fight anyone that tries to tell him Keith isn’t an inch shorter).

The alien’s skin is tinged a dark red with thin veins of green webbing out from its eyes and over its bald, pointy head. Its eyes are black sclera with irises that are actually white, ringed in a thin line of light blue, and a tiny pupil that look like pinprick dots in all the white of the rest of the eye. Lance can’t really tell if the alien is male, or female –its features kind of have his eyes blurring the longer he looks, and it wears the standard prisoner uniform, the clothes hugging tight to its body, but still somehow obscuring its shape. Just above the neckline of the prisoner clothes is a jagged, pale green scar running down the side of the alien’s throat, looking to be long healed.

“Uh,” he mumbles dumbly. “Hi?”

The alien looks at him for a long, searching moment. They hold Lance’s gaze, their eyes burning deep into him, enough that Lance squirms under their sight. Their eyes rove over Lance’s form, and not in a I’m-checking-you-out way, but more clinically, as if Lance is some weird specimen that’s just landed in front of them, and now the alien has been instructed to dissect this specimen and is trying to figure out the best place to start cutting.

Lance inwardly flinches at the picture that draws in his head at that, and he gives the alien his own cursory once-over, picking out the sword loosely held in one six-fingered hand. His fingers twitch; he really wishes he had a weapon of his own. His magic, preferably at full power because damn can he deal some damage, but his bayard would be good right about now too.

Really, he’ll take anything, so long as he can arm and protect himself. The voices, though they remain suspiciously silent in his mind ever since the Druid, swirl restlessly in begrudging agreement.

The alien nods over at the rack of weapons, but Lance doesn’t make the mistake of shifting his focus away from them. “Weapon.”

Lance really, really hopes that this alien’s species isn’t a monosyllabic one.

“Uhm. Do you want another one? Because buddy, I don’t have any.” He spreads his arms wide to showcase just how painfully weaponless he is, though not too wide so that he wouldn’t be able to bring his arms back in to defend himself if the alien does, _Fuck it,_ and attacks.

The alien sighs heavily, slowly. Lance cannot, for the life of him, figure out why he has a terrible flashback to his fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Esparanza, sighing just like that after he got in trouble for the _third time_ in less than one hour for doing something he can’t remember now (in his defence, Lance was a very hyperactive kid, and being able to move shit around without touching it didn’t help any). He really liked Mrs. Esparanza, and hated that sigh, that sigh that was laden with such disappointment.

“Pick a weapon,” the alien says, not in a harsh tone, but just a very tired one. “Practice with it while you can.”

Oh. So it is capable of more than one syllable.

“Okay,” he answers slowly, starting inching his way around the alien. When the alien turns around to follow his movements, he pauses. “Just saying, you kinda need to move so I can, y’know, actually _get_ to those weapons you were talking about?”

The alien doesn’t move. Or rather, they do, more like turning in the spot as they watch Lance edge around them and walk backwards to the rack of weapons, facing the alien because, hey, they might be giving him some kind of advice by telling him to arm himself, but he’s not about to suddenly trust them and start braiding daisy necklaces with them. He’s really, really not that stupid.

Of course, that’s debatable when he nearly impales himself on the blade of one of the shorter spears that just so happens to have its deadly edge pointed outwards to stake idiots like him.

The alien, to their credit, doesn’t so much as blink at the second undignified squeak that breezes past Lance’s lips in less than ten minutes. They simply step to the side and walk toward him, slow enough that Lance knows they’re doing on purpose so as not to set him even more on edge, far enough to his side that they don’t come too close into his personal space.

They nod. “Pick a weapon.”

Warily, Lance turns to face the weapons, eternally grateful that all the other aliens in the room aren’t paying him and this alien –he seriously needs to ask their name –any mind as they go about their own business. Lance looks over the weapons, noting and dismissing one after the other, knowing his strengths and weakness and trying to find which one will play to his advantage. So far, nothing.

The alien watches him in silence, an immovable mountain standing beside him. Lance isn’t sure if the analogy should comfort or disturb him. His skin prickles at the undivided attention, and he just wants to flat out ask the alien what their deal is, but he’s relatively certain that that’d be considered rude on any planet, for any species, and he’s not one of discourtesy. Mami taught him better than that, thank you very much.

(Even in space, Lance isn’t entirely sure Mami won’t find a way to yank his ears off if he was rude to anyone. Last time one of her children was rude to someone, it was Allie, and she was pale and shaking by the time she walked out of the room Mami dragged her into to tell her off. To this day, Lance has no clue what Mami said to Allie.)

(Mami is the best, all the way, but she can be fucking terrifying.)

“So, what are you?” Lance asks, trying to make small talk around the stone in his throat. “Some kind of ‘welcome to the arena, your death is imminent but enjoy it anyways’ party?”

The alien cocks their head to the side. “I am of the Holhan people. What is this ‘imminent party’ you speak of?”

He shakes his head ruefully. “Never mind. You got a name?”

“Folhan.”

He bobs his head. He’s got a name, and because he doesn’t have encyclopaedic knowledge of the universe’s species like Coran does, he’s still not clear on the whole female-male thing. He thinks he’ll just stick to gender neutral pronouns. It’s safer that way, and, he has experience with it for those days when Pidge doesn’t feel like going with ‘she’ and wants everyone to use ‘they’.

“Right, right.” He sticks out his hand, a show of amicability where he just _knows_ Keith would cross his arms over his chest and sulk. “I’m Lance.”

He doesn’t say his last name, or that he’s a Paladin. Honestly, he’s not sure he wants anyone here to know that. Maybe they already do from his being human and simply don’t care, maybe they don’t. If they don’t, he’d like it to stay that way. The reactions of the aliens here to telling them he’s a Paladin of Voltron could come at the toss of a coin; either they’ll think he’s here to liberate them, and he’ll have to crush their hopes because no, he was captured, because again, he is an idiot, or they’ve been here long enough to be brainwashed or indoctrinated into the Galra’s way of thinking and view him as a target.

He’s nervous enough about the fact that, when he looks around the room, he sees there is absolutely no way to get out. There are no windows, the vent is too high up on the wall, and it’s too small for him to wriggle through anyways. There’s no way out, not unless it’s through the door he stumbled through –and that’s manned by two guards, not to mention the other patrolling Galra and droids –or through the door on the other side of the room.

The other door that he has a bad feeling he knows what lies ahead of.

The bad feeling triples when a sliver of excitement dances down his spine, coming from the voices even as they continue to keep their weird silence. Anything they’re excited about _cannot_ be good, in any universe.

Folhan stares at his hand before looking back at him. “Your hand does not look like it detaches. Why are you giving it to me?”

Lance quickly snatches his hand back. “No, no, I’m not giving you my hand! I like it very much, thank you.” He scratches the back of his neck, half covered by his getting-too-long hair. His now defunct tattoo tingles lightly at the touch. “I’m human, and that’s how we greet people. We shake each other’s hands.”

Folhan doesn’t get it. “But you cannot remove your hand.”

Lance sighs. Folhan seems very concerned by that fact. “No, no we cannot. Look, it’s like this.” Using his own hands, he grips one with the other and shakes it up and down. “This is how we greet new people. I shake my hand with yours, and then we let go, and _no one’s hands get cut off.”_

Folhan raises their hand and looks at it. Then they stretch it out, to Lance. It’s their left hand, but Lance doesn’t have the heart to point that out as he smiles a little and shakes Folhan’s hand with his left hand.

“Hiya, Folhan. I’m Lance.”

“You already told me.”

Lance struggles very hard to resist the urge to facepalm, reminding himself that Folhan is an alien, and probably hasn’t ever met a human before, so obviously they can’t know about Earth’s customs.

“Yep, that I did,” he mumbles awkwardly. He gestures at the array of weapons. “So, uh, there’s no rifle in here? Blaster? Anything?”

“’Rifle’?” Folhan repeats. “If you mean energy fuelled long-distance weapons, no. Too dangerous to let prisoners and gladiators have.”

He raises an eyebrow at the careful wording. “Prisoners and gladiators?” he repeats, feigning complete ignorance, as if he doesn’t know which one he is, as if he doesn’t know which one Shiro was. “What’s the difference?”

“Prisoners are to die in the arena.” They say simply, a fact of life that has long been accepted. “Gladiators are to give their life in it. You become a gladiator if you survive your first fight.”

Lance’s eyes drift over the calloused hands crossed over Folhan’s chest, the thick scare down the side of their neck. “Which one are you?”

“I am gladiator.” Folhan raises their chin, as if daring him to judge them for doing what they must to survive. When Lance simply nods, not breaking eye contact, not shuffling away, Folhan’s lip twitches in what could be a very, very small smile. They nod in the general direction of the door on the other side of the room from the entrance. “Today will be my seventh battle.”

Lance hums thoughtfully to mask the queasy clenching of his stomach. “First for me.”

“I know.”

Instead of wanting to facepalm, Lance just smiles at Folhan. Then he turns back to the weapons, trying to figure out what the hell he’s supposed to reliably use in the arena to live another day when none of these weapons are any he’s good with. He really should have trained more with close-quarters combat. He remembers Folhan’s words, and looks back at them.

“You said, ‘energy fuelled long-distance weapons’. I’m gonna go ahead and assume that’s rifles and blasters and whatever, right?” Folhan nods, and Lance fights off the springing hope in his chest with both fists. If he were in the Galra’s shoes, he wouldn’t want those kind of weapons in prisoner hands, either. But otherwise…“Okay, then what about…normal long-distance weapons?”

Folhan regards him with an odd look. “By that, what do you mean?”

He sends a prayer to the gods, even though he seriously doubts their jurisdiction stretches this far out into space. “Any bow and arrows round here?”

Folhan, for all their stoic demeanour, lights up in understanding. “Ah, yes. That, is here.”

Folhan steps toward the weapons and leans around them, long arm reaching behind the rack. Lance watches eagerly, the sounds of metal clamouring against each other, loud to Lance but not enough that the other aliens look over. One or two, closest, glance over in curiosity, but they turn back to their practice swings or murmuring quietly to one another in seconds. Lance gives them a cursory look, noting how they look either tired, fatigue a universal concept, or scared.

There’s only two others of the latter, both the same type of alien with pale white skin that is translucent, their green veins webbing out under their skin, slight of frame though they are a good seven feet tall. They each hold a weapon, the taller one with a slim sword while the slightly shorter one grips a dagger in each hand. Like Lance, they are talking to a brown, reptilian alien with a tail, that shares the same tired look in their eyes that Folhan has. Lance cocks his head to the side curiously when he realizes the third alien is teaching the first two some simple moves with a broadsword.

Lance looks back at Folhan, still rifling through the weapons clustered behind the rack. “You and the other gladiators help the newbies, don’t you?”

Folhan tips their head up over the top bar of the rack. “What is a ‘newbies’?”

Lance taps his chest. “Like me.”

“Captured prisoners?”

“Yeah.”

Folhan turns back to the weapons, returning to their search. “You are very calm compared to the others. Many who come here, to be thrown to the pit of the arena, are confused, and scared. They were snatched from their families and do not know if they will live to see them again.” Folhan gestures vaguely to the reptilian alien. “Those who have lived past our first battle help those who are to face their first. We do what we can.”

A gaping hole opens up in Lance’s stomach at Folhan’s words, spoken with no malice, no hatred, just simple truth regarded in a cold, apathetic light, with something unweighted yet heavy hanging to them. He’s always known that the arenas are bad, that those who fight in them are either ruthless, bloodthirsty Galra who are in it for glory or money, while most who have to suffer in them are people who were taken from their planets, who are forced to fight for their lives, for the amusement and entertainment of the Galra. He knows that many die in the arena, and that Shiro was damned lucky –and a skilled enough fighter –to have survived as long as he did.

There’s anger in him, a low-simmering rage that grows right in his chest when he thinks about all the families that have been torn apart in the ten thousand years since Zarkon has been in rule. The anger is for those families, the planets that have been destroyed and those that have been enslaved and colonized. He doesn’t think the fire of that anger will ever go out, be doused, until this war is done, until Zarkon is finally defeated, and his witch Haggar.

But more than that…

Lance is tired.

He’s tired, because he knew what it is to see families be ripped apart because of another’s greed and lust for power. He already knows how to fight to protect his family, and he knows what it is to not be strong enough to do that, to watch one of them die because of you. He already knew what war is before he joined the Garrison and ended up in this intergalactic war only a year later.

The other Paladins, all they know is righteous anger. Allura is ten thousand years old, over that, but she and Coran spent all of it in cryopods, asleep. In their minds, they’re continuing the war they were there to witness the beginning from, simply continuing it as if there isn’t a ten-thousand-year gap to bridge between then and now.

Pidge is here for her family, that’s all she wanted when she first came. She had no plans to join this war, not even after Keith lost it on her back on Arus. But now, now Lance knows she’ll stay to fight even after they find Samuel and Matt Holt, because she doesn’t want others to be in the same place she is, desperately searching for her family.

Hunk, Hunk’s just fighting this war because he’s scared of what will happen if he doesn’t. If it weren’t for Lance dragging him from their dorms that fateful night, he bets that Hunk would be safe back on Earth, with his moms, with friends, with other humans that he’s not scared will die in this war. Instead, Hunk is here because he’s fighting for his friends, because he knows that they need him. No matter how scared he is and gets, he’ll always be there when his people need him.

Shiro is fighting this war to defend all those who can’t fight for themselves. He’s fighting a war against those that abducted him and turned his whole world upside down, experimented on him like a lab rat, sent him out into the arena to fight like a dog for his life. His war against the Galra is as much personal as it is for the universe.

And Keith’s fighting the war for so many reasons that Lance loses track of them. In the beginning, he knew for absolute certainty that Keith fought because he was outraged at just how cruel the Galra empire is, just how easily they rampage across the universe and take all they want with complete disregard for all life that flows against their agenda. Now, Lance thinks Keith’s priorities have changed –he still wants to liberate the universe, just like before, but since finding out that his mother is Galra, Lance wonders if Keith doesn’t fight the war in an effort to fight the part of himself he’s scared will become like most of the other Galra they meet. Even despite that, even after finding the Blade of Marmora and the hope that comes with them that shows him not all Galra are inherently evil, Keith still fights like an all-encompassing storm that sometimes scares him.

But Lance, he knows the exhaustion that comes when that rage burns right through you, leaving your body in cinders, your soul in ashes, when it’s done with you. He knows what it’s like to stare into the eyes of war and find himself looking back, worn and broken by all the battles that consume him. He knows what it feels like to lie down at the end of the day and just stare blankly at the ceiling, unable to cry because he’d already bled his tears dry long ago, mind numb as disjointed pictures flash before his eyes, fragments of memories that are soaked in red and dying sparks of gold light that fade away into nothing.

He knew it long before they ever got to space.

Lance is roused from his thoughts by a light touch to his shoulder. He almost jerks back in alarm at the unexpected touch, before he follows the red skin netted with thin green veins, up the long, strong arm, up to Folhan’s carefully expressionless face.

“Here,” Folhan gestures with their other hand, looking faintly apologetic for startling Lance. “Your weapon.”

Clutched in the wide breadth of Folhan’s hand is a longbow, a quiver of arrows dangling from a strap hanging on Folhan’s wrist. The bow is made of some gleaming purple metal that Lance couldn’t hope to identify unless he grows a bright orange moustache that possible has a life force of its own that can tell him what he needs to knows. He takes first the bow from Folhan, setting one end on the ground. The metal is cold in his hands, surprisingly, considering the warm temperature of the room, and it reaches just to his collarbone. He lifts the bow up, gripping the bowstring and pulling on it –it’s wound tightly, but not so much that he can’t pull it back the way he needs to.

Lance grins.

Next, he pulls out one arrow from the group of roughly twenty to thirty in the quiver. Its body is the same metal as the bow, perfectly as long as his arm’s length, with spikes at the end for arrows. The spikes aren’t too big so as to cause aerodynamic drag and slow the arrow down too much, but neither are they too small to prevent the arrow from gaining enough spin to keep stable in flight.

Lance turns on his heel and walks over to one of the targets that are unoccupied, ears picking up the surprisingly light footfalls of Folhan following close behind. Lance lines his body up with the target and stands as far from it as he can, at forty yards, more than a little resentful he can’t get to fifty. His body still bears the exhaustion that comes with pushing himself so hard the way he did on Ladene, but his magic bounces back as if he hasn’t drained it to the dregs. If he doesn’t push himself too much like he so foolishly did before, he might make it out of this alive.

No, he _will_ make it out. He has to find a way back home. He has to finish this war, preferably still bodily intact, and make it back home to his family, to let them know that he’s alive, that the Beast hasn’t gotten to him, that the Beast isn’t why he disappeared from the Garrison that night.

He stands upright, feet shoulder-width apart, grip relaxed on the bow handle as he places the arrow on the shelf of the arrow rest. He knocks the arrow, giving the bowstring a few experimental tugs before taking a deep breath and pulls the bow up, arrow aimed ahead of him, index finger above the arrow and two fingers bellow it. He pulls the bowstring with his back muscles, letting his arm stay as relaxed as possible, until his index finger rests under his chin and the string nearly touches his nose and lips. He lifts his elbow up, using his shoulder muscles to pull at the bowstring more. He lines his sight with the centre of the target, unmarked but for some weird squiggles on it he doesn’t bother to interpret.

 ** _:remember:_** the voices ask. There’s no real malice in them the way there usually is. Just a tired sort of curiosity. **_:do you remember do you remember when you needed us and we were there for you do you remember when the beast had its claws in you and we broke free do you remember when we were_ powerful:**

He’s smiling, but he doesn’t know who it is that smiles as he releases the arrow, standing as still as possible. A faint gust of wind whips past his cheek, and it’s like something tight springs unwound in his abdomen as he watches the arrow cut through the air with deadly accuracy and bury itself a centimetre or two from the centre of the target.

Jackpot.

He can work with this.

See, before Lance become a Paladin of Voltron, before he ever laid a hand on his bayard and watched it transform into a rifle, before he honed his sharpshooter skills, Lance trained with the Order, a guild of Witches that teach others in battle magic, as well as to fight without magic. He did it to protect his family, and even though he left the Order after Alex died when most continue their training until after adulthood, he still learned a lot with them. He tried sword fighting, but he isn’t much for close-quarters combat. Hand to hand fights? Yeah, he’ll scrape by, barely.

(And by scrape by, he means he’ll come away with multiple scratches all over his body and zero to nil on his opponent’s.)

But his real forte came when he put his hands on his first bow and arrow, an arrow he fletched with the feathers of an eagle he had to hunt himself. (Truth; he caught the eagle, but let it go soon as he had the feathers he needed. Strictly speaking, his Witch trainers wanted him to kill it, since that was how it was ‘traditionally’ done, but no way in hell was he going to do that, nu-uh. The eagle _looked_ at him, with _feeling_ in its dark eyes. _Hell no_ was he going to kill it.)

(Two weeks later that eagle came back and pooped on him, so, karma.)

He knows that his skill with a rifle or the bow and arrow is pretty level, and while he’s still not entirely sure why his bayard transforms into a sniper rifle instead of a bow and arrow, he knows that he can more than make do with this, for now.

For now, until he gets the fuck out of here.

And he’s going to make sure all the prisoners here get out, too. He’ll do everything he can to make sure that happens.

Lance turns back to Folhan with a wide smile, to find Folhan looking at the arrow in the target with some level of surprise and approval in their eyes.

“You are stronger than you look, Lance.” They comment, shifting their white gaze from the arrow back to Lance.

Lance grins, slinging the bow across his shoulders and hooking his arms over it as the two begin walking towards the arrow. “What can I say? I’m a man of many surprises.”

Folhan blinks at him. “I do not know what that means.”

For the third time in less than twenty minutes, Lance resists the urge to facepalm with the floor.

↭§↭

As Lance irritably waits for something to happen, something to happen to _him,_ he practices with his bow and arrows, tucking a dagger into his boot (just in case), and he notices something.

When the second door in the room opens, a Galra guard comes in and calls out a name. The alien attached to the name goes to the guard, and the two disappear through the door that shuts resoundingly behind them. The time before the guard comes back with another name on his lips varies, sometimes after just five minutes, other times after twenty.

The aliens who go through the door don’t come back in again once they’re gone.

Folhan was called just as Lance had asked them where the aliens went, why they didn’t return. Folhan smiled sadly at him, told him to keep practicing, and went forward with the Galra that came to take them away, swinging dual swords at their sides in circles before sheathing them and passing through the door.

Folhan didn’t return, either.

So Lance does the only thing he can, left without the Holhan’s company, with no other alien approaching him. He practices, just like he was told, trying not to think about whether or not Folhan has family to return to, whether their planet is still whole or if it was destroyed by Zarkon and Haggar.

His aim progressively gets worse the longer the minutes go by and the more the worries swirl around his head and the fear gnaw at his bones. Eventually he gives up lest he tire himself out, and stalks over to the bench, sitting way at the end, as far from the door as possible. The other aliens look on at him with pity, maybe. He doesn’t bother looking back. He sits with his elbows braced on his thighs, leg bouncing up and down in nervous jitters as he clasps his hands together and rests his forehead on them, forcing himself to focus on breathing, to let the air in and out slow and easy.

He can’t let himself panic now –he knows panic attacks, and he knows himself with panic attacks. If he has one now, he’ll be a complete mess for at least an hour, and who knows when his name will be called. He doesn’t think about escaping, because that just makes him think about the fact that he’s stuck on a Galra ship, about to fight in the arena that Shiro can’t even _talk_ about. He’s already figured that he’ll have to find a way out _after_ the arena, on the way to his cell or wherever the hell the Druids wants to put him to meet this dreaded ‘Commander Radnak’.

As he sits and fends off the panic clawing at his mind and body, he wonders if he should pray. He’s never really been one for religion –some Witches believe in God with a capital G, others practice magic in the name of the older pagan gods, and still others serve both. Mami believes more in the old gods, while Papa prays to God, but neither ever forced their children to go with one or the other. They explained why they believed the way they did, and let their children decide for themselves.

He and Allie never cared much for any. He’s not entirely sure why Allie doesn’t, but he never properly believed in the gods or The God™ because he never really saw what they did, or what they could do. He sees science as a way to understand how things came to be and how the world functions, and he does acquiesce that maybe the gods had a hand in some other things, but he finds it especially hard now to let himself believe that god(s) can be so all-powerful as folklore and myths make them out to be when there are millions of planets in the universe with their own gods and their own stories.

He wonders, if he tries to pray now, will anyone listen to him? Will they listen and help him, or will his words spiral out into the void of space, slipping into the cracks and disappearing in nothingness because there never was anything to hear them?

Before he has a chance to bother trying it, the door is opening with a loud click that bounces around in the abrupt hushed silence that falls over every person in the room as they all look up to the Galra that comes in. Lance tenses like a bird about to spring to flight, grasping his bow tight enough to leave imprints of its edges on his palms.

The Galra makes a show of scanning the room, face mostly obscured by the grey helmet but for his mouth. Lance feels like he’s about to splinter into pieces as he watches the Galra open his mouth and speak.

“Prisoner 0248,” _oh shit oh shit oh shit_ “Lance McClain.”

Jòder.

Lance stands on shaky legs, clenching his jaw to get his feet to move as he slowly makes his way to the guard, slinging the quiver of arrows over his back, refusing to look back at the other aliens whose eyes he can feel on his back, watching him go. He doesn’t fight back when the Galra claps a firm hand with a steel grip on his shoulder –he saw what happened to the one foolhardy alien that tried to resist. The alien was knocked out with a single gauntleted punch, then roughly shaken awake and dragged through the door.

If Lance is going to fight in the arena, he doesn’t want it to be after having his brains rattled in his skull.

As soon as the door closes behind him with a thud he feels in his bones, the Galra instructs him to hold his hands out in front of him. Lance swings his bow over his shoulder to rest on his back, and meekly does as told. A pair of glowing cuffs, exactly like the electrically charges ones from before, are clapped on his wrist.

The guard is completely silent as he points a blaster at Lance’s back and pushes him forward, light enough to keep Lance from stumbling, but hard enough for him to feel the muzzle of the blaster on his back. He keeps quiet, listening to the faintest whispers of the voices keeping themselves far enough from him as he walks through a short dimly-lit hallway to a second door. He can’t figure out why the voices are being so quiet all on their own right now, why they aren’t taunting him with knowledge of his impending death, why they’re not trying to pull his spirits down, why they freaking jumpstarted his magic and brought him back to full (okay, almost. More like forty percent) power.

That disturbs him quite a bit more than the fact that he’s a prisoner of the Galra and about to enter the fucking arena.

The closer they get to the door, the louder everything becomes. He can hear the cheering and jeering of what must be a massive crowd, so many voices all screaming different things that it would all fade out into white noise if not for the fact that its volume grows with every step he takes to the door. Nauseas anxiety squirms in his stomach, tightening in his gut, turning the muscles in his legs to lead as the plain, unmarked door gets closer and closer.

The guard stops him, then walks over to the door and raps three times on it in quick succession. Barely a second later it swings open, and before Lance has a chance to get his bearings, the Galra behind him pushes him forward again, and bright lights flood his vision, momentarily blinding him.

Lance winces at the luminance, shutting his eyes and lifting his hands to cover them even as the light penetrates his eyelids and turns the back of them bright pink. He blinks rapidly several times, eyes still tearing up as he slowly lowers his cuffed hands.

His mouth drops open.

This is a scene straight out of _Gladiator,_ only more alien. The arena is a literal arena, the central area of a gargantuan amphitheatre shaped in a huge oval, the floor firm under his feet but covered in brown-yellow sand, streaked with what Lance nauseatingly recognizes as blood, coming from pieces of broken metal strewn haphazardly around the field. Large, broken stone structures whose original shape he has no idea of lie scattered at random over the arena as if discarded there after being thrown around by a giant, with four impossibly tall pillars of purple rock at four corners of the oval.

The grandstands from which come the cheers and calls for fight are absolutely _flooded_ with Galra. So, so many Galra, more than he’s ever seen in one place, under one roof. He can’t even imagine how large this ship must be to contain this arena, in addition to all the other typical battlecruiser-esque features it must have. There are bright lights lining the roof of the arena, all focused on the centre and away from the crowds, enough so that they all just blend into one dark shadow that pulses and shifts like a single live entity, a giant snake waiting to devour him.

He stands on one end of the arena, a concave built into the wall where a single guard stands behind him. On the other side of the arena is another door, similar to the one he just came through, with a guard standing there too. Lance can’t even picture what kind of horrific nightmare will walk through that door; what kind of nightmare he’ll have to fight.

“Hey,” the guard behind him calls. Lance turns and the guard gestures for his hands. He obediently holds them out, rubbing his hands over the stinging lines on his wrists after the guard removes the cuffs, then gestures to the arena. “Good luck.”

Lance blinks stupidly at the guard for a moment. “What?”

The guard says no more, impatiently flapping his hand at Lance. Slowly, keeping his confused eyes on the guard for a few more seconds, Lance steps back and turns to face the arena again, wondering at why the guard would wish him luck. Does he not know who Lance is? Lance shakes his head, trying to dislodge the confused thoughts buzzing in his head like incessant flies. He doesn’t have time to think about that –right now he has to focus on survival.

Right in the middle of the square the four pillars make is a hoverboard, some kind of circular floating contraption on which stands a squat Galra, a dwarf compared to the rest of the race. Lance gives the dwarf an odd look, eyebrows sky-high; he seriously never thought he’d ever come across a dwarf Galra, although, by human standards, the Galra is maybe an inch taller than Lance, which isn’t really dwarfish at all. But eh, that’s what happens when the rest of your race are towering giants.

“Next up in to fight in the arena,” the dwarf’s voice booms out from the futuristic mic he’s holding, carrying well over the sounds of the crowd. “A dreaded Paladin of the evil Voltron, pilot of the malevolent Blue Lion, human LANCE MCCLAIN!”

Over the roars and boos and other assorted jeers to his status, Lance feels a spike of pure hatred for the dwarf. Dreaded Paladin? Evil Voltron? Malevolent Blue Lion? What kind of bullshit propaganda is that? How fucking _dare_ he even think to utter those words strung together with Voltron, with _Blue?_  His Blue, his precious Blue who hurt so much when she realized Lance’s plan, when she realized that her quintessence couldn’t be used to power the magic needed to teleport Lance to the Castle as well.

Lance’s hands tremble at his sides, his magic sparking in response to his anger as he stalks across the sand to the middle of the arena, tipping his head back to look at the dais the dwarf stands on, directly above him. His lips curl contemptuously.

It would be so easy to knock the dwarf off its floating podium –so easy, and the fall to the ground is so, so far away. It wouldn’t be hard. His magic isn’t at full power, but all it would take is a simple flick of his wrist, a direction for the invisible force of his magic to follow, and the dwarf would fall, fall **_:to the ground and break his neck because even if the ground is covered in sand there’s still rock there’s still stone under it let’s watch his skull crack open like a spoiled egg:_**

“And facing the human Paladin,” the dwarf’s voice echoing through the mic startles Lance out of his murderous thoughts, and he realizes that it wasn’t him thinking that, it was the voices. The voices, sneaking through the fissures in his mental shields, whispering him, goading him.

He slathers up the cracks in his shields with layers of cement and can only pray they hold long enough for him to get somewhere where he can’t hurt anyone. Preferably with his necklace on.

“Facing the Blue Paladin in this here arena,” the dwarf continues, waving his short, pudgy arms, inciting the crowd to a frenzy as they start up a thumping beat in anticipation. “Is one of the famously devious Narganianns to the arena, EDMYNUN!”

This time the crowd positively cheers in malicious satisfaction where they had gibed at Lance. He looks down from the dwarf’s podium to the other door, turning to face it as he tunes out the crowd’s infinite noise. The guard at the door opens it to reveal an alien that steps into the light, blinking in blindness the way Lance did mere seconds ago.

Lance pales at the sight of Edmynun. He was right –what’s waiting on the other side of the door is a nightmare. It’s not some monstrous Druidic-experimented cyborg creature like the ones Haggar turns into Robeasts and sends after Voltron. It’s not even a hulking Galra soldier with massive muscles that could snap him in half, like a twig.

It’s an alien.

An alien who looks just as afraid to be there as Lance is trying not to look, even as that same fear courses through his veins like poison, like black tar pulsing sluggishly through his body, cementing his feet to where he stands, immobile, unable to take a single step forward.

Edmynun has four arms, two to each side, with skin that is a pale pink, glistening with what might be perspiration under the harsh lights of the arena. Three short appendages that end at their wide shoulders look like they might stand in for hair, and are coloured a darker shade of pink than their skin, though still incredibly light. Swishing in agitation behind them is a long tail, strong, powerful, something that can knock him down flat on his back. The alien seems almost entirely themed in pastel colours, their prisoner uniform jarringly garish set against the pale colours as Edmynun lowers two of their hands from shielding their face from the lights. As they do, Lance sees that their bulbous eyes are pure black, and watery, like they were just crying.

He would feel sorrow, would want to comfort Edmynun at the sight of their tears, reassure that hey, his friends will come get him, they _will,_ and when they do everyone who’s a prisoner here will get out…if not for the fact that he can see none of their four hands are holding anything resembling a weapon. He tenses immediately when he notices that, when he sees that Edmynun there absolutely nothing in any hand.

A pang of something he knows, something he’s familiar with, curls his stomach tight. Something he knows as instinct –and it’s not just the fight or flight instinct.

It’s the instinct that tells him he will have to kill to live.

“Fighters!” he jolts in shock at the dwarf’s voice booming through the air, looking up and nearly jumping a foot in surprise to find that the floating podium is circling around a few metres above their heads, the dwarf’s warty face peering at them with clinical disinterest in complete opposition to the lively tone he’s using on the crowd. “Approach to within two mira of each other.”

 _What the fuck is a mira?_ He thinks, stomach roiling as he tilts his head back to try and make out the dwarf’s face as his podium comes to a spinning spot right in front of one of the huge floodlights, throwing his face in shadow.

“And what if I don’t?” he calls up to the Galra dwarf, even as he notes Edmynun slowly approach him before stopping roughly ten paces from him. “I don’t have to do what you say.”

He sounds like a petulant child and he knows it, and does not give two shits about it.

He can’t tell, but he’s quite sure the dwarf stares at him for a moment before a short arm lifts, finger flicking slightly. For a beat, nothing happens. Then he does give a shit about it when something hot and purple and glowing whizzes past Lance’s ear, the blast punching into the ground at his feet and sending a cloud of sand kicking up at the impact.

He jerks back, pulling his bow and nocking an arrow on in one fluid motion, in under a second as he spins on the balls of his feet and aims the arrow in the direction the shot came from. The lights make it difficult for him to see the walls of the arena, to try and figure out where the shot came from. Slowly, he turns around, lowering the arrow so it points at the ground, even though he’s sorely tempted to shoot it at the dwarf’s foot.

“Actually, you do,” the dwarf drawls. “Because if you don’t, you’ll be shot, body carted off dead or alive, and we’ll just get another in here to take your place. Either way, there will be a fight –am I right?” he raises his voice at the last part for the crowd, and they howl back their agreement.

Lance licks his lips, eyes flicking about as he weighs his limited options. He could go ahead and shoot this presenter Galra, but then whoever shot at him will take him out before he can do anything, especially considering he has no idea where the shooter is, or how good they are. Even if the Galra commander on this ship wants Lance alive, it doesn’t guarantee that he won’t get injured enough that when he does try to escape, he won’t make it very far. He could try to make a break for it, but the arena is too big, and though there are those huge stone blocks lying in the sand to use as a shield, he probably wouldn’t make it past the door.

Really, he only has one choice he can realistically go with, if he wants to get out of this alive.

He has to fight Edmynun (nobody said kill, though, right?). The alien that is weaponless.

He does not like that. Not one bit.

Edmynun being weaponless part, that is. Of course he doesn’t like that he has to fight at all –but it doesn’t make sense that Edmynun is unarmed, while he’s equipped with a freaking bow and arrow (granted, if humans think they’re rudimentary Stone Age weapons, he can’t imagine what an advanced race of aliens think of them), with a dagger tucked in his boot. There’s something not right about that.

Lance grits his teeth in frustration as he turns to face Edmynun, taking a few steps forward until he’s back to being ten paces from it. This close, he can see that Edmynun is a good couple of inches taller than him. Hopefully he’s slow.

“Goodie,” dwarf enunciates monotonously. “Now, let’s get to the real fun, shall we?” if both hands were free, Lance is sure the dwarf would rub them together like some pathetic cartoonish megalomaniac villain. “Take one mir back from each other.”

 _Bitch what the fuck,_ he silently grouches. _Make up your damn mind._ He watches Edmynun move back five paces, face a mask of grief. Lance mimics their move, then looks back at the dwarf.

“Hey, what about him?” he gestures at Edmynun, taking a haphazard guess at its gender, since the alien does kind of look male.

The podium whirrs, purple lights lighting up under it as the dwarf spins to look at him. “What about him _what,_ Paladin?”

The dwarf deserves an award for successfully making the innocent word ‘Paladin’ sound like the most blasphemous cuss out there.

“He’s unarmed,” Lance calls, trying to keep his anger from bleeding into his voice. “That’s a little unfair, isn’t it?”

The dwarf, unexpectedly, chuckles. “Oh, you human. You’re so funny.” He says the term with the same fond endearment you receive from your most dreaded aunt who likes to stab you with her taloned fingernails when she pinches your cheeks in Christmas greeting. “You know nothing of Narganianns, do you?”

Acid drips in his stomach. Of course. Of-fucking- _course_ the Narganiann has something up his sleeve.

He’s quite sure he catches the sight of a self-satisfied smirk from the dwarf before he zips away in his piloting stump, up to where it’s safe from potentially flying arrows. Lance waits, muscles tense and hands clenched tight on his bow as his mind flies through every which scenario he can spin this, trying to figure out the best way to injure Edmynun enough that the fight will be called to an end without him having to kill the Narganiann, or Edmynun kill him.

“Hey,” Lance calls out, ears pricking as he quickly glances around and notices that he can’t hear the crowd screaming anymore. He glances up to see the faint shimmer of some kind of force field surrounding them, curving high above them and completely encompassing the arena. He shakes his head and focuses back on Edmynun. His head turns to him, and Lance knows he’s listening. “Look, we don’t have to kill each other, okay? No one said anything about killing. We just –”

“I am sorry,” he gurgles, cutting Lance off, voice wavering like water flowing in a brook. The sound would be pleasant, if not for the immense remorse weighing it down. Lance can see it –he can see the sorrow that feels its black eyes. The sorrow paints Edmynun’s eyes with flecks of rainbow reflected by the harsh lights surrounding them, illuminating their every move for the hordes of Galra watching them. “I am sorry, but I must. My family will die if I do not.”

“Edmynun, please, listen, we can –”

Lance barely has time to lift his bow and shoot an arrow when Edmynun spins around, lashing out with his deceptively long tail. Though he jumps back and the arrow grazes one of Edmynun’s arms, Lance is still caught off-guard when the moist tail smacks his arm, whatever oily substance coating it smearing on the side of his cheek as he’s knocked off his feet.

He grunts as he rolls a few feet away, forcing himself to keep a firm grip on the bow. As soon as he comes to a stop he springs back to his feet, an arrow already nocked and aiming at Edmynun, who stands twenty feet in front of him. He shifts his angle by a mere centimetre and lets the arrow loose, watching as it flies and embeds itself in the sand at Edmynun’s feet, who leaps out of the way at the last second from having his foot impaled.

Lance rapidly backs away, keeping the arrow on Edmynun getting to his feet and watching Lance, moving back until he’s safely behind one of the large stone blocks, rising up thirty feet and giving him the cover he needs while keeping an eye on the Narganiann. His cheek tingles from whatever greasy substance rubbed on his skin, and he tips his head to the side just enough to wipe his cheek on the shoulder of his prisoner outfit before refocusing his sights on Edmynun. The voices stir restlessly inside him, and with the absence of his necklace, their whispers are screams in his mind, screams that tell him they want him to shoot Edmynun through the heart.

**_:desperation makes people lose themselves you think he’ll show you the same mercy he’ll cut you to pieces as soon as you’re close enough:_ **

“Come on, Edmynun,” he calls, pleading, still hoping to get them both out of here alive. “Come on, please, we don’t have to do this.”

Edmynun shakes his head dolefully. “I must.”

And he watches as the regret in Edmynun’s eyes melts into something else, as his _eyes_ become something else; or rather, someone. They lighten, narrow, get smaller, get more _human._ The black clears away into white, and then brown irises appear, eyes that are supposed to be warm and inviting, but now look at Lance with such infinite disappointment that he feels it like a heavy blanket slithering over his skin, dragging its weight over him, pinning him down, holding him in place as it slices into him with knives of disdain and rejection.

Hunk, _Hunk,_ shakes his head, so sad that Lance feels his heart break. “I’m so disappointed in you, Lance.”

Oh gods. Oh _gods,_ it’s Hunk’s voice, this isn’t –this isn’t some illusion, that’s _Hunk_ talking to him right now –telling him that –that –

Lance shakes his head, his lower lip trembling as a spear of hurt tears through his heart. “Hunk –buddy, buddy you can’t mean that –we’re friends, we’re best friends!”

Hunk frowns at him, looking on with disdainful pity. “Why would I want to be friends with you? You’re annoying.”

**_:let us in:_ **

He flinches in surprise when, between one blink and the next, it’s Pidge standing there. Little Pidge, hair ruffled messily because she forgets to brush it at least every once in a while, glasses flashing as she tilts her head to look at him over her nose, her eyes hidden behind the lenses, lips twisted in scorn.

“Did you really believe me when I said you’re my brother?” she asks, laughing mockingly. “Seriously? That’s fucking imbecilic, even for you, Lance. I only did it to get your lazy ass moving because we need Voltron.”

Branches of pain twine around his heart like poison ivy roots covered in thorns. “Pidge, no,” he says, desperate, pleading, hands loosening on the bowstring. “Please, please, you can’t mean that.”

“I really do, Lance,” she snarls, her words cracking through him like a whip lashing down on the thin cage of his ribs protecting his bleeding heart. “You’re just a seventh wheel, and a useless one at that. You can’t do anything. You’re only here because you were conveniently there in the cave when we found Blue.”

**_:we’ll protect you:_ **

Blink and you miss it, but Lance doesn’t miss what his eyes fall on when he opens them. Storm clouds replace amber sand dunes, and a tuft of white hair falls over the scarred skin on a human nose.

Shiro.

Shiro, looking at him with such contempt and hatred that Lance’s insides turn to molten stone, heating and liquefying his guts.

“But you couldn’t even keep yourself out of Galra hands,” Shiro continues, picking up from where Pidge left off.

“Sh –Shiro?” he stammers.

“You let yourself get captured. You couldn’t even protect yourself without us there, covering for your incompetence.”

“What are you –” he cuts himself off, violently shaken as he backs away while the Black Paladin stalks forward, lithe like a caged lion waiting to spring and attack.

His arms tremble, but he doesn’t lift the bow and arrow because this, this is _Shiro_. How can he ever point a weapon at his leader, his hero? There must –there must be a reason for this. Maybe it’s something Lance did wrong but he can, he can do better, he can make himself better and more useful.

He doesn’t want to lift the arrow, but he does when Shiro’s arm glows purple, when the whites of his eyes turn a glowing yellow. Something in his heart dripping red spikes with a shaft of pain that threatens to tear him apart because –because Shiro is arming himself. He’s arming himself against _Lance._

He wants to hurt Lance, because Lance is an idiot, he’s stupid, he’s a useless seventh wheel who couldn’t even keep himself out of enemy hands.

Shiro comes up short when Lance aims the arrow right at his heart. The metal arrowhead shakes with the tremors travelling up and down Lance’s arms. His lips tremble as he stares up at his leader, the man he hero worshiped for the longest time, even after the first couple of nights he found Shiro walking up and down the Castle halls, unable to sleep from nightmares. He found Shiro to be the strongest man he’d ever met, because even with everything he’s been through, Shiro is still in this fight. He’s not running away from the burden that comes with it.

Unlike Lance, who ran away from his responsibilities, from his family, from Allie, from the Beast, because he couldn’t handle it.

“Shiro, stop,” he begs, barely above a whisper. “Please, please stop, you have to stop.”

The Black Paladin shakes his head, lips curling into a snarl, canines elongated to something akin to fangs. “At least Allura can take over flying Blue now, like she was supposed to, if you weren’t there.”

“No! Blue –Blue chose me!” Lance yells, everything in him cracking with the pain of the words of his team spearing through him with blades dipped in the poison of all the thoughts he’s ever had himself, all the thoughts given voice by those he loves, those he’s feared would one day say them aloud. “She chose _me_ to pilot her!”

Shiro cocks his head. “Why else do you think Blue isn’t talking to you now?”

**_:we’ll save you:_ **

Keith is there.

Standing in front of Lance, closer than Shiro was, the point of Lance’s arrow barely an inch from Keith’s heart. Keith is completely unbothered by the sharpened point aimed at his chest, his eyes a tempest of violet clouds that swirl into roiling blue oceans in the blackest nights. He looks at Lance impassively, the little curl at the corner of his lips the only hint to the storms clashing in his eyes. His bayard flashes at his side, lengthening into his sword grasped firmly in his hand.

“I thought your powers could give us the upper hand in this war, but I guess not.” Keith says, his every word dripping with acid. He takes a step forward, lifting his sword, and Lance scrambles back, but Keith follows, mimicking every step, completely disregarding the quavering arrow at his heart. “You’re more of a liability. Even with magic, you’re just a _useless cargo pilot.”_

**_:LET US IN:_ **

Lance breaks.

His soul splinters like the broken fragments of a shattered mirror falling to pieces. Red washes over his vision as his arms slacken minutely, and the voices are suddenly here, everywhere. Everything inside him burns hotter than the flames that spiral from the heat of lava flowing down an exploding volcano.

The voices come flooding in and clamouring for room in his mind, fighting and tearing at each other for his body, spilling in through the gaping cracks in his flimsy mental shields that waver and disappear like they were never there at all.

**_:he lifts the bow again and he does not hesitate:_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I doubt any of you will know this, but in the last chapter when Allie stumbled over Ladene's name and said 'Ladna' instead, that was me throwing in Russian. :)
> 
> You know that paragraph about the rescued kitten? Yeah, that’s how my mom rescued our first cat, Nala. Except, Nala doesn’t sit still long enough for you to take a picture of her. No, no she’s gonna snap at you like a damn snake attack and bite your hand off before you get that picture in (I have the scars to prove this).
> 
> Three years and sixcats later, I can say with certainty that that is also the beginning of the saga that is My Mother And I Are Incapable Of Not Picking Up Cats From The Street And Raising Them As Our Demonic and Sanctimonious Children.
> 
> This chapter is dedicated to [mclancelot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mclancelot/pseuds/mclancelot) and [GonerLoner](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GonerLoner/pseuds/GonerLoner) for being such amazing readers! Thank you for reading and sticking with this chaotic mess of a fic!
> 
> As always, please do tell me what you thought of the chapter! Your comments and support actually give me life --no, really, I was sick this weekend and still binge-wrote my way through 14k, that says a lot.  
> (conveniently does not mention 60% of that time was spent bingeing on Supernatural)
> 
> [Wattpad](https://www.wattpad.com/user/azurehyn) || [Tumblr](https://www.azurehyn.tumblr.com)


	7. heart ache to heart ache (we stand)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith and Allie talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nictate is a word. Fight me on this. I’m not kidding –I’ve got a dictionary to thump on the head of whoever tries to tell me nictate isn’t a word.
> 
> ||“heart ache to heart ache (we stand)” = Love Is A Battlefield, J2 ft. Chelsea Caroline||
> 
> I don't know why I'm posting this on Valentine's. It's just happening. Don't question it

It has been nine days.

Nine days since Lance was taken. Every hour that goes by with no news, no change, feels like a century drudging by. With how slow the illusion of time crawls by, it doesn’t take long for Keith to realize that even with Shiro and Allura’s combined efforts, the team is falling apart without their beating heart to keep them functioning. It’s only now that they see just how much Lance means to them, how much he does for them, and never asks for anything in return, never calls attention to the kindness he shows them when he boasts and prances around about literally everything else.

It’s only now that Pidge realizes Lance would come over to her lab and bug and prod and poke and tease and pout and whine until she snapped at him, and only then would she feel how tired she really was, and begrudgingly follow Lance to where he’d drop her off to her room. Sometimes he’d even stay for a while and brush her hair for her, sighing in mock-exasperation and lamenting the tangles ensnared in it for how long she can go conveniently forgetting she has hair at all. She’d grumble and grouch, but she likes it more than she lets on. It reminds her of Matt, how he used to brush out her longer hair before, though his skills were a little more rudimentary, and he didn’t braid her hair the way Lance does.

It’s only now that Hunk feels how empty the kitchen and his room is without Lance’s presence there, his laughter, sitting on the counter or on the table in Hunk’s room and swinging his legs as he regaled Hunk with stories of his family, distracting Hunk from his crippling restless worry and nervousness, returning the countless hugs Hunk gives out when he feels homesick for his moms and his life back on Earth.

It’s only now that Allura sees how intuitive Lance is when he’d come into the star-map room night after night and send her off to bed, acting like the brother she wishes she had but never did. He always knew she would be there trying to get more work in, and tell her that enough was enough, she needs to rest or she won’t be of any help to anyone, in the gentlest voice possible. Then he’d throw in some generic joke about how blasphemous it would be to allow her beauty to mummify from lack of sleep, and she’d laugh at his antics, shaking her head ruefully and a smile on her lips as she waved him goodnight on her way to her room.

It’s only now Coran feels how lonely he gets, even with Allura there. Lance is really the only one who shows any interest at all in Coran’s stories of old Altea, of the time before the Galra became a race of conquerors and colonizers, of all the memories stored in Coran’s brain of King Alfor and his wife, of baby Allura, of his own family, the son he still sees in Lance. Allura is the only other Altean he can connect with, but she’s a Princess, and always busy working to secure alliances with other planets and the Blade against the Galra empire, creating mission plans and flight patterns with Shiro to better combat their enemy. Coran understands her, and he took comfort in Lance being there to help him and relate to his homesickness.

It’s only now Shiro sees how much support he derived from Lance, on the many nights when he can’t sleep because of the worries that weigh him down as leader, on the many nights he’d walk down the halls and peek into the Paladins’ rooms to make sure they’re still in bed (or in the chair in her lab) and not suddenly gone, missing, taken by the Galra the way he was. Lance would somehow always find him despite the vastness of the Castle, and quietly walk down those halls with him. When they’d get to the common room they’d sit down and Lance would reassure him, unprompted, that he was a good leader, a _great_ leader. He’d ease the heavy atmosphere by telling Shiro stories his Mami or Papa told him, or stories of the wild adventures his family were a part of, or make Shiro laugh by lifting the couch he was sitting on half to the ceiling with his extraordinary magic.

It’s only now Keith realizes how much Lance grounds him, how much Lance helps him by picking fights with Keith, sometimes even physically, so that he can let out all the pent-up energy he stubbornly tries to keep in all the time, because Lance knows that’s how Keith gets rid of all the anger that burns in him. Lance would tease him relentlessly, start banter-filled fights for little reason, throw them headfirst into useless competitions that so often had Keith doubled over in laughter. All traces of anger and initial irritation at Lance’s meddling would be completely gone by then, Lance laughing right along with him. Keith can’t count the number of times he’s been caught off-guard by the way Lance’s eyes became the calm, playful ocean on a clear day, how the shadows of storms in a distance he can’t fathom were chased away by the lingering smile on Lance’s lips.

Pidge went back to Ladene using the cloaking device she built for Green. She stripped the distress beacon of every last morsel of data it had, before she electrocuted its emptied main data processing unit, then set it on fire, the old fashioned way; sticks and stones. More like her bayard and stones, but still a little overkill either way. When Keith hears about it, he wishes he was there right with her to watch the thing that drew them to the planet as a lure to trap them burn to twisted pieces of metal no better than scrap.

She has gotten a total of six hours of sleep in the days since Lance has been gone. She growls at Shiro liked a caged animal when he tries to get her to rest. Shiro’s had to resort to threats, and even then she only sleeps for thirty minutes or so before she’s back at her station, on the floor, laptop and tablets and holographic diagrams of machines and others with lines of codes strewn about her in a chaotic mess whose order she alone knows, focusing on decrypting the Galra coding that set the beacon off in the first place at the same time as perusing the galaxies of Galra messages, trying to find mention of Lance, trying to track the beacon’s signature code to the ship it came from.

Shiro does his best to comfort Hunk when his anxiety gets at its worst, and while Hunk appreciates it, it’s painfully obvious that it should be Lance here, helping, just…just _being_ here. Hunk alternates his time between trying to track down the specific location of Lance’s helmet, even just finding a generalized vicinity, and whirling through cooking and baking his way through his stultifying anxiety worsened by Lance’s capture. No one can bring themselves to eat what he cooks. Salt isn’t something the Alteans care for, but Hunk figures out a way to unintentionally season what he cooks by crying over it.

Allura docks the Castle on the moon of the gas planet Veliki, in the Hladna Studen system that Ladene orbits in. They stay in the solar system in case the Galra return for any reason, so that they can track them back to Lance. She does it to put less strain on the Castle’s engines as Coran goes about the ship’s repairs so that when they find Lance (it’s not _if,_ but _when._ No one will entertain the thought of ‘if’) they can head for him immediately, and get him back, unhindered by the damage the Castle took in its last aerial battle.

Allura and Coran are the only ones really taking care of themselves without outside supervision, but Keith has caught Allura crying quietly with her head on Shiro’s shoulder as they flick through star-maps deep into the Castle’s night cycle, categorizing distress signals for later attention. Coran is avoiding his emotions and the reality of what’s happened, of losing another son, by regularly disappearing into the Castle for its repairs, for long enough that Keith thinks he’s running away from the other Paladins, because they’re all just a constant reminder of why Lance isn’t here.

Allie is the one who tries to soothe the Blue Lion’s sorrow, something that all the Lions can feel through their bond to her, and in turn, the Paladins as well, an aching weight in their chests that have them all unable to look each other in the eye. Keith was furious the first time, when he saw Allie kneeling in front of Blue, the Lion’s head lowered to rest between her paws. He’d been seconds away from storming in and dragging her away from Blue, from _Lance’s_ Blue, _Lance’s_ Lion, until he heard her quiet sniffles.

Allie keeps up a stoic, guarded attitude around them all, hiding her every emotion behind a well-built wall. Keith didn’t go in and stop her from talking to Blue because, as if the uncanny resemblance hadn’t done enough to, he’d only just then realized that Allie is Lance’s sister. Lance is her _brother,_ her _twin,_ and she’s suddenly been pulled into space for shady reasons, only to find that her brother has been fighting an intergalactic war none of them asked for, and that he’s been captured by the enemy and lies in their hands, vulnerable and magically drained, unable to protect himself.

Keith avoids her after that.

Shiro searches through the star-maps for any hint of Galra presence in their current galaxy or any of the surrounding ones, but it’s like this entire section of the universe has somehow eluded most of Galra attention, or maybe there’s just nothing here to interest them. He is trying to keep the team from falling apart without their Lance, even as Keith watches him torture himself over what he could have done differently, why he didn’t notice the signs sooner, as if he knew what signs to look for. Keith always tries telling himself to go to Shiro, talk to him, tell him that it’s not his fault, because they all know it’s not.

He never does, because there’s a small part of him that isn’t entirely convinced of it, and he loathes himself for letting that part exist.

Allura reaches out to the Ladenians, something Allie was on the verge of contesting until Shiro sternly informed her that the Ladenians aren’t allied with the Galra, and it was their planet the Galra used to attempt to trap the Paladins, and that it would be foolish to ignore what the Ladenians may have to say. She storms out of the bridge at that, and no one goes to try talk to her, because no one knows how to when she doesn’t let anyone close enough.

Despite Lance and Allie’s obvious (albeit confusing) fear of them, the Ladenians prove to be friendly (if frosty, which seems more a species than character trait). Allura talks to a Ladenian delegate who speaks on behalf of her king, offering their people’s help, and to provide what resources and information on the Galra’s movements that she can. The Ladenians are incensed at the Galra’s intrusion on their planet, and more than willing to do what they can to fight back, despite having managed to stay away from the war for thousands of years. They have heard stories of Voltron, they know how much Voltron means to those still stuck under Zarkon’s thumb –though they wish to remain apart from the war, they understand the importance of the Paladins’ role in the war, and are willing to do what they can to help.

Allie looks angry, and confused, when Allura tells them this.

Keith spends all his time flying in Red around the large as-yet-unconquered galaxy, searching until he can’t keep his eyes open and his muscles cramp from sitting so tense for so long. He even goes to two other galaxies, but has to promise stop that when a swarm of Galra fighters come after him in one of them and almost overwhelmed him, and Shiro gives him a verbal flogging for going off on his own, without backup. Keith had lashed out, saying such terrible things that shame colours him when he thinks of them, things like how Shiro doesn’t care about Lance, how Shiro thinks Lance can just be replaced by Allie just because Blue talks to her.

Keith has never felt worse than he did in the moment when Shiro looked at him, his face splintering for a mere second to reveal the utter _heartbreak_ and sorrow that he hid behind gritty determination, when Shiro’s face shuttered down after that and he simply said, in the hushed, subdued voice, “We’ve lost one friend, Keith, and we are _fighting_ to get him back. Please, please don’t make us lose another.”

Keith tries to avoid him after that, but Shiro knows him too well, always popping up when Keith least expects it, not giving Keith a chance to fester in self-hatred.

When he’s not searching amongst the stars for their missing Paladin, he’s training himself half to death, only stopping when Shiro threatens to have him sedated if he doesn’t get some rest. Even then, he doesn’t sleep. Instead he aimlessly wanders the Castle’s halls like a stranded wraith until he falls asleep, exhausted, wherever he happens to be. Shiro’s taken to keeping an eye on the security cameras so that he can carry Keith back to his bed.

He never stays in bed long. He always wakes up gasping for breath, a name half on his lips, half lost in the dark haze of formless dream that haunts his mind like a ghost clinging to the last vestige of its old life. He’ll always find himself out of his room and standing in front of Lance’s before he’s aware of it.

He never goes in.

↭§↭

Keith’s eyeballs hurt.

He knows that’s probably a sign that he needs to take a break. He doesn’t really know how long he’s spent out here with Red, searching through the stars around Ladene, trying to find a way to get Lance back by finding any Galra he can beat bloody for information. The fact that he’s lost track of time, that it feels like days instead of the hours Red tells him he’s been out here, that is what tells him that he needs a break.

But every time he thinks about going back to the Castle, with Pidge’s sleepless eyes barely glancing his way as she loses her mind in her computer

Hunk’s guilty, nervous eyes shifting away from him when he enters the kitchen to find the Yellow Paladin soaking his food goo in tears as he tries to zero in on Lance’s helmet or armour

Shiro’s worried looks every time he catches Keith making a beeline for the training room or the hangars instead of his own room to sleep

Allura and Coran’s non-stop back and forth Altean as they hypothesize on the Galra’s interference with the Lion-Paladin bonds and what it might have to do with Lance, and searching through every distress signal that could be his before disregarding them as not

Keith doesn’t want to go back to that.

And then there’s Allie.

Allie clammed up about her reaction (and Lance’s) to the Ladenians as soon as they started asking questions. When she sees that they’re not about to drop the subject, not when _both_ twins reacted the way they did to an alien species that hasn’t explored further than their own solar system, she simply turned on her heel and walked right out of the common room, leaving them gaping at her abrupt exit. She didn’t even say anything, she just…left. No one chased after her, because there’s still the little-not-little matter of the forest of arrows at her back.

He doesn’t want to be around anyone right now, so when he flies Red back to her hangar and speedily walks past Blue’s, he goes to the training room, his number one sanctuary.

He goes to the training room, and he fights and screams his way through taking down gladiator after gladiator, levelling up higher than he’s ever done before and totally uncaring for any it because the one he really wants to show to how good he’s gotten isn’t _here_ to see it. He fights and screams and cries into the emptiness of the training room, until black flowers blossom in his sight and he passes out from sheer exhaustion that stretches its greedy fingers of oblivion, swallowing him up whole.

↭§↭

Keith wakes up groggily, the seams of his eyelids sewn shut by the heaviness of unconsciousness trying to keep a hold on him. He comes to in that strange, lethargic way when Brain is telling you, _Hey, idiot, wake the fuck up, you got shit to do,_ but Body stubbornly retaliates with, _Fuck off, let me die._

It’s a struggle, to say the least.

Just trying to open his eyes is like trying to pry apart two planks of wood that have been nailed together –it’s nigh on impossible, and the only reason he eventually does manage it is because he senses someone by his side.

After the number of foster homes Keith’s been recycled through, after all the many nights spent sleepless or lingering close to the edge of awareness even when asleep because no place is ever safe enough, he knows when to make himself wake up if there’s someone in the room with him. The sensation of shared space is what tugs at his sleeping body, alerting him that hey, maybe Brain is right, and hey, maybe someone’s about to attack Body when he’s vulnerable.

Keith wonders if it’s possible that he’s spelling out his utter bewilderment in Morse code for how many times he blinks as he gapes stupidly, silently, at the person sitting in a chair they pulled up next to the bed he lays on in the med-bay. He’s been trying to avoid Allie as much as humanly possible, and what with the way _everyone_ is avoiding each other, and how massive the Castle is, it’s not been difficult. Allie’s never made any effort to reach out to any of them, either.

So to find Allie sitting in the chair in the med-bay, the two entirely alone there, leaves Keith more than a little flabbergasted. She’s wearing a pair of black tights and a grey hoodie underneath her leather jacket, coupled with the combat boots he’s not entirely sure she ever takes off. Even though her bow and arrows are nowhere to be seen, he doesn’t doubt for a split-second that she’s got at least two of her blades somewhere on her person.

When he’d first seen her in different clothes, he’d been surprised at first –everyone got their clothes replicated by the Castle’s systems (he doesn’t question it, just accepts it), but because they only had what they were wearing when they left Earth, they couldn’t really get any new or different clothes (space malls are just…no). Then he remembered the bag Allie had when she appeared on the Castle; it’s probably full of clothes, from how often she does switch out her outfits.

It makes Keith wonder why exactly she was not only armed to the teeth, but packed with plenty of spare clothes. He can think of a few reasons, but…they don’t really make sense.

In all honesty, though, nothing about this entire situation makes even remotely sense.

But that’s not all. When Keith looks up, he has to suppress a gasp of surprise; Allie’s eyes aren’t the electric blue he hates seeing for their reminder of the ocean eyes that aren’t here. They’re gold, a swimming sea of molten amber that is streaked with flashes of her normal blue (the term in itself is relative) as she stares emptily at the wall opposite her. It almost looks like sun disks are on her eyes, devoid of pupils. They’re the same gold that Lance’s eyes flash whenever he uses magic that isn’t supposedly as simple as blinking, except with Lance, there’s a single streak of a dark line cutting across his left eye, like black lightning.

It’s disconcerting, to say the least, coupled with her strange appearance. She looks unearthly, like some kind of creature born of starlight and trapped in a mortal body.

A minute later, Allie blinks, and the gold vanishes in a nictate. She peers blearily at the wall opposite, as if she’s just waking from a deep slumber as well. A frown pulls her brows low, lips twisting in irritation, before she looks down. Her expression smooths out to careful neutrality when she sees he’s awake.

For a moment, both watch each other silently, neither particularly willing to breach the wall separating them, both more than a little afraid of drowning in trying to cross the gulf between them. Keith pushes himself up, shivering a little from the chilly temperature of the med-bay in his short-sleeved black shirt. The blanket covering him bunches at his waist as he shuffles around and leans back against the wall, legs crossed, arms folded loosely across his chest, elbows resting on his thighs. Allie watches him move, not saying a word, no hint of what she’s thinking passing over her closed-off eyes.

Keith is, surprisingly, the one to break the silence the longer the seconds stretch. Allie doesn’t look like she’s about to go anywhere, and Keith is curious. He doesn’t like letting his curiosity sit unanswered.

He lifts his chin slightly. His voice comes out hoarse from lack of use, cracking a little at the end, like bad static on the radio. “What are you doing?”

“You’re all doing what you can to find him.” She answers simply. “So am I.”

“Our eyes don’t turn gold when we do.” He comments quietly. “You’re using magic?”

She hesitates at that, eyebrows knitting, lips thinning to near invisibility. Slowly, she nods. “Yes. I’m trying to find Lance’s location, but space is just…it’s so…” she shakes her head, unable to come up with the right words.

Keith decides to help her out. A little. “Big?”

“Big.” Her shoulders slump. “I know space is big, but knowing it and seeing it is two different things.”

His glances over to the med-bay door, thinking of the bridge and looking through the glass out into the universe stretched out before him, of flying in Red through those stars that burn so bright, even as they die. He thinks about just how many people there are in that universe, so much of it being overrun by the Galra, so many people desperate for help, and how they’re all depending on Voltron to save them. He thinks about how crushing that weight of expectation is, how the reality of it catches him off-guard sometimes, strangling him until he has to run away from the others so that he can struggle to remember how to breathe on his own again.

“I get what you mean.” He brings his attention back to Allie. “Why am I in the med-bay?”

She gives him a strange look he can’t interpret. “Shiro found you passed out in the training room. He brought you here to sleep. He also said that if he finds you in the training room again after you wake up, he’ll set the doors to lock you out.”

“He can’t do that.”

Allie smiles thinly. “He also said you’d say that, and that if you do, to tell you that he can. Even if he can’t, Allura can and will.”

 _Goddamnit._ He hates it when Shiro does this.

Allie leans over to the bedside table next to him and picks up a water pouch he didn’t see. With a quiet word of thanks, he takes it from her and pushes the straw in, sucking in a big gulp of water, only just now realizing how parched he is, throat like a desert, lips chapped like the cracked ground of a land stricken by drought. He finishes the entire water pouch in three more swigs, sighing a little in relief as he crumples the pouch in his hand.

He glances at Allie when she stands from the chair, its metal legs squeaking on the floor as she pushes it back. Instead of leaving, however, she walks around the room, moving slowly, looking over all the various equipment laid out. Keith wonders if she does it to keep herself busy, if she remotely understands anything of what she’s looking at.

He tips his head back to rest on the wall so he can stare at the ceiling. It’s far, far above him, just like all the ceilings in the Castle are except in the Paladins’ rooms and the kitchen, but he can make out the tracing of lines of the tiles in it. He follows their straight and turning paths for a little while, wondering if he should say something to fill the awkward silence, before he drops his head again.

Allie’s still walking around, now standing by the medicine cabinet on the opposite side of the room from Keith. She’s peering through the glass, trying to make out the labels on the bottles inside. He wonders why she’d have such an interest in any of it. Almost as if she can sense him watching her (with those ears, he doesn’t put it past her), she speaks. When she does, he kind of wishes she’d just kept quiet and continued her inspection of the med-bay, or just left.

“You don’t like me.” She says quietly. It’s not a question, but more of a statement of simple fact.

Keith looks away. He doesn’t answer.

“It’s not because I pointed an arrow at your friends,” she continues into his silence, walking back to stand by his bedside. “And it’s not because I won’t tell you more than I have.” She cocks her head to the side. “You don’t like me because you’re afraid I’ll replace him.”

He doesn’t answer.

“That is a really stupid fear, Keith.” She remarks bluntly.

He does look at her then, a little startled to hear his name coming from her, a little more surprised by how she very obviously makes her words sound like she thinks he is an absolute idiot for entertaining the thought. He doesn’t really fault her for that –he thinks he’s an idiot too. That doesn’t make handling her presence on the Castle any easier.

“Blue did not accept me, Keith. She only let me past her barrier because she knows me through Lance’s memories. She only let me through because she wants me to find her Paladin.” She leans forward a little. “I could never be a Paladin, or replace Lance. Do you know why?”

He doesn’t say anything, but his eyes ask her to tell him. To tell him why she can’t replace Lance. To tell him, when she’s shown herself to be on par with them, to be a warrior that could help them in their war. To tell him why he shouldn’t be afraid that when Lance comes back, he won’t want to go back home while Allie stays here.

“Lance is your heart.” Allie says simply. She smiles faintly at the confused furrow of his brows. “All of you, on your own, you are disconnected pieces. Some of you are close enough to another that you can gravitate toward them, that you can work with them. But all together, you can’t even be in the same room without Lance. Did you think I hadn’t noticed?”

“What –” he pauses, licking his chapped lips, dropping his eyes to his hands folded limply in his lap, water pouch crumpled in one hand. “What are you talking about?”

“As soon as you walk into a room, Hunk leaves, because he’s remembering all the little fights and competitions you have with Lance. As soon as Pidge comes in, you leave, because you remember all the times you’ve seen Lance go after her for not sleeping enough and taking care of herself like she should. As soon as Shiro walks in, Coran leaves, because Shiro is the leader, and he didn’t bring one of his teammates back, someone Coran sees as a son. Allura can’t go to the kitchen because all she sees when she does is Hunk cooking and Lance tasting whatever he’s made, Lance joking with Hunk to keep his mind off his anxiety, and just being together.”

Keith’s brain is too foggy to deal with this. More like, he simply does not want to be talking about this. At all. Ever. Continued avoidance of the matter is preferable than facing it head-on, which is funny, considering that’s exactly what Keith prefers to do.

But he doesn’t want to talk about how quickly the team is dismantling without Lance around. He doesn’t want to look weak because he failed to protect one of his teammates. “That’s –we’re dealing with this the best we can.”

“You’re not. You are literally doing everything but ‘dealing’.” She retorts. “You’re falling apart.”

“It’s none of your business.” He grouches.

“It is when you’re the ones looking for my brother, and you’re the ones going to help get him back. How the hell do you expect to fight off Galra soldiers when you’re training yourself to death and passing out like _this,”_ there is clear disgust in her tone as she gestures at him, sitting in bed, pale as the sheets he lies on, black bags tattooed under his eyes.

“You don’t even know what Galra look like.” He mutters petulantly, turning his face away from her so that all he sees of her is from his periphery.

She tips her head in the direction of the doors. She softens, just a little. “I told you. Blue told me everything, including what Lance himself doesn’t know. Lance, he gives everything he can to all of you, because he loves you. You’re his space family. That’s…it’s not something I can do, ever.”

She leans forward and clicks her fingers in front of his face. He jerks back at the move, scowling fiercely at her. _“What?”_

“I want to know why you hate me.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“You are a shitty liar.”

“Like you’d know.”

She rolls her eyes. “I repeat; Blue told me _everything._ I’ve seen most of the things you have done in the last year through Lance’s memories.”

He glares. “That’s creepy.”

She gives him a frank regard. “Point out something in the last year you’ve been in space that isn’t in some way creepy.”

“You’re the creepy one for turning up in space, out of nowhere.”

“Your point is weak.” She heaves a breath. “Keith, let me put it this way; I am not leaving this room until you tell me what about me bothers you so much. I can’t do anything properly when I’m trying to find Lance when I constantly feel someone lurking and staring and then disappearing as soon as I look back.”

“You make me sound like a stalker.”

“That is what you are acting like.”

“I’m not.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

He sighs in frustration, running his hands through his hair before dropping them to his lap and staring unseeingly at them. “I don’t hate you,” he repeats quietly. When she doesn’t immediately answer, he looks up to see her standing with her arms crossed, watching him, keeping quiet so he can continue. He sighs again. “I don’t. It’s just –it’s just, you’re here, and he isn’t.”

“I am painfully aware of that.” She deadpans.

He shakes his head. “That’s not what I mean.”

“Keith, use your words. Why do I bother you?”

“Look, I don’t want to talk about this, okay?” he snaps. “Just leave me alone.”

She glares. “I don’t want to talk about it either, but I have to, because if my full attention isn’t on tracking Lance, I might as well just sit on my ass and twiddle me thumbs for all the good it would do.”

“What the hell do you want me to say?”

“I want you to tell me,” she enunciates in a measured tone, like she’s talking to a five-year-old. “Why I bother you so much.”

The voice she uses, like he’s a child, is what snaps him.

“Because it’s hard to look at you, to see how much you look like each other, and not want him to be here, too!” he exclaims, throwing his hands up in the air from sheer aggravation at being pushed so much to say words he doesn’t want to be speaking. “You’re twins, I get it. He’s your brother, I get it. You’re supposed to protect him, I sort of get it.”

“Then why –”

“You weren’t _there.”_ He cuts her off harshly. “You weren’t in that tunnel trying to convince him that we’d all make it out of there, together. It’s like, one second I was looking at him, and he was right there in front of me. The next, his eyes are doing that gold thing, his nose is bleeding, and then I’m on the bridge and Lance isn’t _anywhere_ and before I can get back to him, the fucking Galra have him in their ship and he’s _gone._ He was _gone,_ and I couldn’t do shit about it, and I _still_ can’t do anything like Pidge and Hunk and Shiro and even Allura and Coran. All I can do is fly, and that’s not good enough now. You’re like a constant reminder of that.”

She drops her fierce gaze at that, and Keith would feel some pride in that, if not for the way her shoulders sag like there are weights dragging her down, the only visible tell to her emotions.

“You wanted me to tell you what my problem is,” he slumps against the wall, so drained from shouting, even when he feels like some sort of invisible, unnameable pressure has been lifted from pressing down on his aching ribs. “There it is. You’re a reminder of my failure to protect him.”

_You’re a reminder of how he broke his promise not to leave._

“I’m –”

“Don’t apologize.” He grumbles curtly. “It’s not your fault.”

“I know,” she replies quietly. “But I am sorry for not taking that into consideration.” He looks at her, frowning. When he doesn’t say anything, she adds, “I have been so focused on finding him, and so angry that this is happening in the first place, that I didn’t think about the fact that you…that all of you are suffering, as well.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose tiredly, closing his eyes. He really, really doesn’t want to be doing this right now. “Did you just come here to talk when I don’t want to, or was there something else.”

He opens his eyes when he hears her settle in the chair again, and he fights back a sigh when he realizes that, whatever the hell more she wants from him, she probably wants it now, and won’t leave until she gets it. She bites her lip, but for a few seconds she doesn’t look at him, doesn’t say anything. She keeps her eyes on her fingers, thumb tapping out an unheard tune against her leg before she blows out a breath.

Her lips twitch as her face sets, decision made, whatever it is. She reaches up and pulls out her necklace, silver catching the light as it comes free of her shirt. She stands again slowly, chair squeaking a little as she moves and leans over the bed. He tenses instinctively; she’s not close enough to invade his personal space, really, but he doesn’t like most people being within two feet of him at any given time. Especially after he’s just told them why he doesn’t like them.

(From _day one_ Lance always ignored that, always stood close to Keith, always always _always_ )

She flips her necklace so the back is shown, and he warily eyes her for a moment before looking down.

His breath catches in his chest as his eyes widen, awed. Right in the centre of the square of the pendant surrounded by interlocking circles is a small crystal. It’s shaped like a teardrop, perhaps only as big as his thumb. It is a deep navy blue, the colour of a morning storm brewing over a dark ocean. But more than that is the fact that it seems to pulse with an unnameable sort of energy, slow little beats of light, like a heart, that brighten its surface before darkening again.  Its beauty takes his breath away, locking it somewhere he can’t reach for it as he stares at blue that draws him in, sinks him deep under waves he has no wish of rising up from. His heart aches as he thinks, _Lance,_ because the crystal reminds him of Lance’s eyes.

Keith would hate the colour blue for how much he misses it now that it’s gone, if not for the fact that it’s Lance’s blue, and he can’t quite bring himself to hate it as much as he wants to.

“This,” Allie softly taps the crystal with the tip of her nail. Her voice comes murky to his ears, as if he really is pushing his way up to the surface of a still, calm lake to focus back on her. “Is a tiny bit of Lance’s magic.”

 _Oh,_ he thinks dimly. _That’s why._ That’s why he thinks of Lance when he sees it.

Then, _No wait, holy shit._

This –this is a piece of Lance’s magic. Holy shit, this is _a literal physical piece_ of Lance’s magic, and it’s…it’s exactly like how Keith never thought he’d imagine Lance’s magic to look. It’s not something he’s ever given thought to –heck, just over two weeks ago he had no idea magic was actually real. He’s always been into cryptids, but magic? That’s not something he ever really considered. But now that he knows, and now that he sees, he can’t imagine Lance’s magic being any other way.

He does wonder, though, if it’s coincidence that Lance’s magic is blue, a blue that reminds him of the glittering blue cloud of quintessence that flowed from the Blue Lion as she talked to Allie without discernible words, eight –nine? How long has he been out? –days ago.

Allie leans back from him, smiling faintly, as if she knows what he’s thinking. She tucks her pendant back under her sweater, laying her hand where it rests just over her heart. The melancholy on her face is there for a split second before she washes it away and looks back at Keith, all professional-like, albeit a little tenser than before. Probably because getting shouted at and told you’re a reminder of someone’s failure isn’t really the best way to remain relaxed around them. There is a rigidity to her posture that wasn’t there before, and for some reason, it reminds him of how weirdly tense Lance used to be when they first got to space, when he was so adamant about being rivals with Keith.

“When we made these necklaces, he put this in mine, and I put a little of my magic in his. This is how I got here. His magic in my pendant sensed he was in trouble, and pulled me to its partner, my magic in his.” She frowns slightly. “I’ve been trying to find traces of my brother’s magic to track it back to him, but it’s not working.”

In a way, that kind of does make sense. But… “Why here?”

She cocks her head to the side, puzzled.

“I mean, why _here?”_ he clarifies. “If the necklaces connect you to his magic, why…why didn’t you go to where he is?”

He’s sure he doesn’t miss the warble of her smile as she gives him, quite possibly, the saddest look he’s ever seen on any being. “Did you know Lance dreams of you?”

Keith startles so bad at that, spasms shooting through his fingers as if he’d just been shocked by electricity as he gapes stupidly at Allie. “What?”

He’s sure he doesn’t mistake the sudden roguish light in her eye, the impishness to the faintness of the smile on her lips. She looks so mischievous in this moment, sadness briefly overshadowed by the little sparks in her eyes. It doesn’t last long before the smile fades away, the sparks dying in her eyes like all the billions of stars out there.

“He dreams of all of you.”

Oh. “How do you know?”

“Our necklaces. He doesn’t know, but sometimes I see his dreams, in mine. Lance has nightmares about any of you being captured. It’s why he sacrificed himself like that; he’d rather it be him than any of you.” She tilts her head to the side. “You’re willing to do the same for my brother, aren’t you?”

He chooses to ignore the heaviness in his chest at her words on Lance’s dreams by focusing on the irritation that stirs at her perceptiveness. He really, really doesn’t like it when people act like they know him –and he likes it even less when their guesses about his motives are disturbingly on point. “How would you know,” he grumbles.

She shrugs lightly, the move belying the darkness hiding behind her eyes, the darkness lingering around her like a shadow come to life. “I can’t read minds, if that’s what you’re thinking.” She gestures vaguely at his face. “It’s in your eyes. Your poker face is good, but I’m better at reading people.”

“What does that have to do with why you’re here?” he snaps testily.

Her eyes harden. “Because Lance will do anything for you, any of you. When you needed him, he went. When he did, he left his necklace behind, when he knows he shouldn’t. I don’t know why he didn’t take it with him.” Allie shakes her head. “I can’t find him without his necklace there with him because his magic has changed.”

He frowns. “What does that mean?”

“It’s not what it used to be. I think,” she answers slowly, as if the thought is still only half-formulated, still just a vague idea in her head. “I’m not sure, but I think it might be because of Blue. Or, more like it is because of becoming a Paladin.”

“I don’t get it.”

Her lips twitch in what might be amusement. “Whatever the Voltron Lions are, there’s something about them that is like magic. It’s not exactly magic, that’s why I would rather call it quintessence like the rest of you, but it’s close enough. Because Lance is a Witch, he’s more sensitive to quintessence.”

He has to admit, it explains why Lance bonded so quickly with Blue, so much faster than everyone did with their Lions.

There’s a lump in his throat as he remembers Lance making snow flurries twirl around Keith’s head at dinner the other day, _just the other day,_ and laughing when Keith futilely tried to bat the flurries away. It didn’t work, and only resulted in the warmth of his hand turning them into water that soaked through his clothes. He remembers how irritated he’d been, but also how happy he was as he chased Lance down the halls screaming revenge, trying to smother the laughter in his voice as Pidge took videos and Hunk smiled indulgently at them.

(Shiro was less than amused when Lance and Keith inadvertently ended up almost tripping the Black Paladin thanks to making the floors all wet. Keith thinks the only reason Shiro didn’t set them both on healing pod clean-up duty was because Lance sent out a shy little flurry that danced around Shiro’s face and brushed his nose until the older man laughed and sent them off with a stern warning not to repeat the shenanigan again.

He will _deny_ ever thinking that Lance looked stupidly adorable with that stupid shy smile as he teased Shiro.)

“Snow,” he murmurs.

“What?”

Keith looks up from staring listlessly at his hands. “Lance said he wasn’t able to do elemental magic, he called it, but after getting here he started being able to do a little of it. He can manipulate ice, snow, water a little.”

Allie nods knowingly as he talks, and Keith has to remind himself that she probably already knows that, thanks to Blue.

“Elemental magic is tricky,” she agrees. “It’s a literal part of nature, and the magic that is infused in nature is…it’s very primal, old. Witches have to be very careful when doing it, and if they can, it’s usually only one element, like Lance with water. Very, very cold water, apparently.”

“Is that why you’re always with the Blue Lion?” he asks.

“Yeah. Whatever she is, her quintessence has influenced his magic, merged with it, a little. It’s why I’m here now. All of you, and Blue, are the last exposed to Lance using his magic most recently. I’ve been trying to get a lock on his new magic, you can say, through you.”

Keith holds his breath. “Is it working?”

Her lips twitch. “No. I don’t know if it’s because I am not doing enough, or if it’s because Lance is just too far away for me to track. I’ve tried using his jacket as a personal item, and now I’m trying to pick up any sense of his magic from any of you, but I just can’t get a lock on him, no matter what I do.”

“Have you tried the healing pods? L –he said that they don’t work on injuries he gets magically. Maybe there’s some of his magic in them?”

“Coran told me about that.” She wrinkles her nose. “They look like alien coffins.”

“Never tell him that.”

“I get the feeling that would be a bad idea.”

“You have no idea.”

For a moment, a brief respite in the miasmic cloud hanging over them, the two smile weakly at each other. Her smile drops first as she steps back. “I already tried them. As far as I can tell, they reject Lance’s magic because it’s not quintessence, and they don’t recognize that.”

He grunts. “So you’re at as much of a dead end as the rest of us.”

“Basically.”

“Is there anything we can do to help you?”

She shakes her head ruefully. “Unless you can do magic and search yourself for even the smallest traces of Lance’s magic on you, no, there’s nothing. All I can do is keep trying and hope I find something.” She crosses her arms over her chest and looks down at her boot, scuffing the toe against the smooth white floor. She doesn’t look up as she says quietly, “I’m sorry for bothering you when you just woke up. This wasn’t the best time to do it, I know. I’m…not very good with patience.”

He’s pretty much the same way. Patience is something he struggles infinitely with, and chanting Shiro’s advice like a mantra, _Patience yields focus,_ doesn’t help him as much as he wishes it does. He watches Allie as she looks up and nods briefly at him, spinning on her heel and walking towards the door.

Keith decides to extend an olive branch; after all, if they’re going to help each other find Lance and bring him home, they can’t do it tiptoeing around each other, waiting for the other to explode. “Me too.”

He doesn’t say more than that, but from the faint smile she shoots him over her shoulder, he thinks she understands him. It makes him wonder just how much Blue knows of him, how much she in turn told Allie. It makes him think about what Lance thinks of him, what Blue knows of it and what she told Allie. As Keith watches her cross the room and reach the door, he can’t help but question something that’s been bugging him since she revealed herself to be Lance’s twin.

The shock of that news wouldn’t have been so great if Hunk had known –but all Hunk knew was that Allie was an older sister that Lance didn’t talk too much about. At least, not as much as he talked about his younger siblings, and his parents, and the plethora of aunts and uncles and cousins and nephews and nieces. He remembers what Allie said on the bridge, about how she thinks Lance doesn’t talk about her because she reminds him of the bad things in his life because she was there for them.

“Hey,” Keith calls, just before Allie would step out of the door.

She half-turns back, brow lifted. “Yes?”

“What happened to you?”

She frowns quizzically, stepping back into the room to face him more fully as she keeps one hand on the door. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he replies slowly, trying to figure out the right words to voice his dawning realization. “Lan –he always talks about his family with happiness. He misses you all, but the stories he shares are happy ones.”

Allie still looks confused. “I’m not sure I understand…”

“You don’t look happy.” He says simply. “Happy people don’t walk around armed the way you are. They don’t look like how you did when you saw the Ladenian.” She visibly tenses at that, and he hurries to add, “I just –I guess I just want to understand why Lance painted this –this rosy picture of his life back on Earth, and you…you’re not like that.”

Allie’s grip is white-knuckled on the doorframe as her eyes move away from him, shadowed with memories and thoughts he will never be privy to. When she speaks, it’s so quiet, even in the suffocating silence of the med-bay, that he has to strain to hear her.

“War.” Her voice is purposefully empty. “War is what happened to me. War is why Lance tells you all of the good things, and none of the bad.”

With that, she ducks out of the room without another backward glance, leaving Keith reeling at her words.

War.

War?

What the hell is he supposed to take from that? What war? What, did she enlist in the army and serve time in war-torn zones back on Earth? Does Cuba do that? God, he doesn’t know. But what else could it be? Allie’s been here for eight –nine? –days. That’s not enough time to have experienced that war against the Galra enough for her to carry that heavy look in her eyes all the time.

His mind flounders like a baby otter venturing out into water for the first time. He doesn’t know how to react to Allie’s words, or the look on her face when she said them, or the endless questions circling his mind that just keep coming back to _why why why why why._

He’s slow as he pushes himself off the bed, shaking his legs out to get prickling feeling back in them, and he barely even notices that he’s muttering the many _why_ ’s under his breath as he reaches for his jacket. He is just shrugging it on when Pidge’s voice _roars_ over the Castle’s overhead comms.

“Everybody get to the bridge right now!” she cries. “We’ve just received a video transmission. I think it’s from the ship Lance is on!”

Keith has never run so fast in his life before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, I swear to god, I know I keep saying shit is coming next chapter, but I mean it this time, really! Next chapter you are in for a TREAT. A very violent one, mind you, and Lance isn’t gonna be doing so well, Keith’s so confused, everyone’s so confused, no one knows what’s going on… Also, next chapter will be VERY LONG AS WELL, so prepare for that. The next chapter was originally part of this one, but then it got to 20k, and even I have limits, so...I split it.
> 
> What did you think about Keith and Allie’s talk though? That bit at the end where he asked her what happened to her was put in SPECIFICALLY FOR THOSE PEOPLE STILL HATIN’ ON ALLIE. Y’ALL, SHE BE THE WAY SHE IS FOR A GODDAMN REASON.
> 
> You know that part where Keith just didn't want to wake up? That was me today. I had a four-hour nap that was supposed to be only one hour because I have a shitton of Psychology work to plough through, but I swear to god every hour I'd open my eyes and see it's only been an hour, then I'd say 'one more hour' and drop right back to sleep before repeating the cycle every hour. The only reason I actually got the fuck up was because I kept rolling around and my cat was having none of that shit.
> 
> So now I look like I was a badass in a fistfight and got my lip cut when the reality is I pissed my cat off. 
> 
> As always, any comment is always welcome (if it’s criticism ples be gentle I’m a soft potato)
> 
> [Wattpad](https://www.wattpad.com/user/azurehyn) || [Tumblr](https://www.azurehyn.tumblr.com)
> 
> Also, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL THE LOVELY COMMENTS AND KUDOS I LOVE YOU ALL <3


	8. harnessing (anger)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A strange Lance makes a comeback and no one knows how to handle that. Pidge is a certifiable genius even with something she doesn’t fully understand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to sit on this until Friday. Clearly I failed.
> 
> Ok. So. I don’t know what happened with this chapter. It got so long, and by the time I realized, Bitch hey, maybe stop it here before it turns into another huge-ass chapter, it was already too late. So, enjoy this monstrosity of a chapter.
> 
> This was actually part of chapter 7, but when that got to 20k, that’s when I knew I had to split it. I hate doing this because I am determined to finish this arc of the story –there’ll be three arcs btw, all in this fic, not another part of the series don’t worry –by chapter 10. I hope y’all noticed the ugly-ass ? has become 30.
> 
> Quick question; have any of you noticed that Keith hasn’t said Allie’s name? Like, ever? At all? I’m just curious, but why do you think that is? One more question; do you want to see other character POVs? I know I’m mostly with Lance and Keith, but if you guys are interested, I can also sometimes feature the others’ POVs…maybe even Allie? Maybe. Idk. Let’s see.
> 
> ||harnessing (anger) – Harnessing Anger, Blake Neely||
> 
> TW (heh, lots o’ triggers here); blood, injury, fighting, detailed torture…um, magical pain? How else do I tag-trigger that?
> 
> By the way, when these trigger warnings come along, I hope y’all realize that the Graphic Depictions of Violence warning comes in play here, unless otherwise stated. I’m not going to write GDOV every single time there’s trigger warnings because A) I’m lazy and B) I have shitty memory, blame my ADD and a traumatic childhood

Keith and Allie burst onto the bridge at the same time, after she lets him catch up with her (really, the girl’s so fast that when you’re at pace with her, you know it’s only because she’s slowing herself down to match you). The team is standing in front of the large window, in front of which hovers a view screen the size of a plasma TV, Pidge being the only one not with the rest, sitting at her station and trying to track the source of the video. While Allie streaks ahead to join everyone else, Keith stops dead just a few feet behind them when he sees what’s playing on the screen.

It’s an arena.

There is no mistaking it, and it’s almost exactly how Keith imagined it would look. The grandstands hold a massive crowd of Galra that cheer and jeer and howl for blood, so many of them packed so close together that they look more as one entity than different little beings shoved next to each other. Standing on a floating oval of a podium is a Galra who might possibly be considered dwarfish compared to its –his? –kin, though the term is relative considering the ‘dwarf’ is about Hunk’s height.

The podium hovers at level with the crowd, in the centre of a square of four massive purple stone pillars that rise up from the arena itself, dotted with large, ruined stone structures strewn about at random. The pillars seem to be some kind of generators for the massive holographic screen that is settled atop each of the four pillars, showing a close-up of the arena below to the audience. The floor of the arena is covered in sand –

Keith stops breathing.

It’s Lance.

It’s _Lance_ on the floor of the arena, facing a pink alien with four arms and a powerful tail that swishes in agitation behind its back, eyes completely black and protuberant, almost like some kind of fish. Lance is wearing the standard Galra prisoner’s uniform, and as Keith steps closer, squinting and trying to pick out any injuries, he sees that Lance doesn’t look worse for wear. In fact, he looks –he looks better than he did back on Ladene. The deathly pallor to his face has coloured a little bit, and though his hair, wildly askew, has seen better days, Keith can’t help but feel a little bit of relief that Lance doesn’t look outwardly hurt in any way.

The Galra dwarf floats his podium down to hover between Lance and the alien, and Lance tips his head up, lips curled in a contemptuous smirk as he mouths off to the Galra. None of the team can hear anything over the screaming crowd, but they don’t miss it when the Galra gestures in some vague direction. Next thing they know, a laser blast shoots out from somewhere behind Lance and hits the sand at his feet.

Lance leaps back, and that is when they see the weapon he has, an arrow he pulls out from a group collected in a quiver at his back, swiftly nocking it on a bow almost as tall as him. He spins round on the balls of his feet, arm pulled back on the arrow he aims in the direction the shot came from. Keith sees him squinting through the bright lights surrounding him before he slowly turns back round to face the Galra as he says something to Lance.

Keith doesn’t like it when, upon closer inspection, he sees that the pink alien is unarmed. If they allowed Lance to have a weapon in the arena, why not the alien, too?

“What’s going on?” Hunk asks.

Keith glances at Shiro, searching for signs of a possible panic attack –besides his hands clenched into fists at his sides, lips pressed to a fine line, Shiro doesn’t look like he’s about to panic. His eyes are wide as he stares at Lance, on the screen, _in_ an arena, but he looks more shocked by what he’s seeing than afraid.

“Shiro,” he murmurs. When Shiro doesn’t react, Keith slowly reaches out and touches his human arm, lightly. Shiro startles a little at the touch, then turns a little to look back at Keith. “You okay?”

Shiro nods tightly. “I’ll be fine.”

They both hear the lie in the truth that wants to be.

“It’s an arena,” Allura is answering Hunk, subdued as she watches the screen. “Many large Galra cruisers hold arenas where they set prisoners to fight against each other. It looks –” her breath catches. She clears her throat and continues. “It looks like they’re making him fight in one; they sent this video to make us watch it for a reason.”

Behind her, Coran gasps. “Princess –Princess, that’s a Narganiann.”

Allura leans forward, squinting, before her hand flies to her mouth, eyes wide in shock. “Oh, no. This isn’t good.”

“What do you mean?” Hunk asks, wringing his orange headband nervously in his hands. “What’s not good about Narganianns?”

It takes Coran a moment to speak, and Keith knows, he just knows that whatever he says, it’s not good for Lance. “Narganianns are a type of shapeshifter species, nearly gone extinct. They have peculiar mental abilities. Their bodies are coated in a thin membrane on their skin that allows them to –to fight better. Their tails have glands on the underside that secrete a particular substance that aids them better.”

“What does that mean?” Shiro asks, not looking at Coran but still closely watching Lance, the alien, the Galra floating on his dais between the two.

“It means,” Allura says, picking up where Coran left off. “That the substance on their tails, once coming into contact with another living being capable of more than rudimentary cognitive function, allows the Narganiann to actually see those thoughts.”

“And not just any thoughts,” Coran continues. “But those that are one’s deepest fears. Once the Narganiann has access to those thoughts, they shapeshift into that fears’ physical form, and use it to gain the upper hand in any fight to throw off their opponents. Every word the Narganiann speaks are not their own, but the hidden thoughts of their opponents.”

A low whine sounds from the back of Allie’s throat, her eyebrows wrinkling in distress. “Oh gods, no, _no._ Tell me that’s not true, _please.”_ She turns to Allura and Coran, pleading, and they look away guiltily.

They say nothing.

Their silence is answer enough.

“Pidge,” Keith whispers, so quiet that his words are a mere breath spoken on air that forces itself out of his aching lungs. “Is this live?”

“No,” she’s still behind them, still fixated on tracking the video’s source while it plays. Her voice is strained. Keith doesn’t know if it’s from misery at what’s on the screen, or from frustration with what she’s doing. “It’s a recording. I’m still trying to crack the encoding, but I don’t think that video was taken too long ago.”

Keith looks at Allie. She’s pale, her skin ashen and eyes wide as she presses her lips to a fine line. Her hands are closed in loose fists at her sides, a faint tremor running up and down her entire frame as she stares fixedly at the screen, eyes going up and down as she looks at her brother. Keith looks between the two, and even though the Lance in the video is too far to tell, he’s struck again by their uncanny resemblance to each other.

 _They’re twins,_ he reminds himself, still in a delayed state of shock that Lance has a twin sister he just never mentioned.

“Allie,” Hunk asks quietly. “Lance’s bayard is a rifle. Can he actually use a bow and arrow?”

Slowly, almost as if she’s hearing him talk through a cloud that fogs her mind, she nods. “He’s trained with it. He’s better with a bow and arrow than I ever was.”

Keith frowns as he looks back to the view screen, to where the Galra is zipping up on his podium to float safely out of reach of Lance’s arrows. If that’s true, then why does his bayard transform into a sniper rifle?

It does explain Lance’s almost inhuman aim, though. He can’t imagine successfully aiming and shooting an arrow would be easy, but if he’s trained with it, shooting a gun must be a breeze compared.

Keith tenses when the video pans out, showcasing the massive, heaving crowd, echoing their excitement in their voices all screaming for the fight to begin. Then the video zooms in, and shimmers a little, as if the device recording all this has just passed through some kind of barrier. All at once, the crowd’s noise fades out, and as the video gets closer and closer to Lance facing the alien, they can hear exactly what he’s saying.

“Hey,” Lance says, and Keith almost goes weak at the knees in pure _relief_ to hear the voice again, even despite the pleading tone in it. Lance still looks a little pale, but at least he’s _alive._ “Look, we don’t have to kill each other, okay? No one said anything about killing. We just –”

“I am sorry,” the alien’s voice ripples like water in a stream. Keith’s heart sinks like a stone to the bottom of the ocean at the deep regret that ties itself to the alien’s words. “I am sorry, but I must. My family will die if I do not.”

Shit.

_Shit._

“Edmynun, please,” Lance tries again, his eyebrows wrinkled, so obviously _not_ wanting to fight the alien that Keith’s chest aches with the need to do something to stop this. But if this is just a recording, then it means this fight already happened. There’s nothing Keith can do to stop it, short of time travel. “Listen, we can –”

Before Lance can finish the alien, Edmynun, spins around and lashes out with its tail. Lance barely manages to lift his bow, and while the arrow shoots forward and cuts one of Edmynun’s arms, the reach of the alien’s tail is still long enough to knock Lance off his feet, sending him to his back. Lance wastes no time as he rolls away, keeping his hands on his bow and arrow as he leaps to his feet.

Keith watches with bated breath as he sees the line Lance has his arrow pointed it straight on Edmynun’s chest, where his heart should be. The video zooms in close enough for Keith to see something strange happen to Lance’s eyes just then –the cobalt blue, for a brief moment, flickers to crimson. Keith blinks, and in the next instant he’s looking at Lance’s blue again. Lance shifts the arrow a bare centimetre, and loosens it, sending it to the alien’s feet, who jumps back a second before it would lose its foot.

Something unnameable unravels in his chest at the fact that Lance didn’t take the killing shot he had, even as that same something coils tight in his gut, like a black snake hissing and spitting venom. Lance backs up until he’s in cover behind one of the large, ruined stone structures. The video pans in on Lance, and Keith’s heart freezes when he sees Lance quickly wiping off something from his cheek.

“The Narganiann’s tail,” Coran murmurs, a quiet groan following. “They got the toxin on Lance’s skin.”

“Come on, Edmynun,” Lance’s voice echoes like a horrific memory in their ears, still trying to get through to the Narganiann. “Come on, please, we don’t have to do this.”

Edmynun shakes his head. “I must.”

Keith feels a hot burst of _anger_ at the alien for not even _considering_ Lance’s words, not even _trying_ to get out of this without killing someone. What the fuck is wrong with them?

Suddenly, they’re not looking at the Narganiann anymore. The pale pink skin shimmers, shifting. Bulbous black eyes lighten, narrow, get smaller, get more _human._ The black clears away into white, and then brown irises appear. White armour themed with yellow accents clads the body under the brown eyes, eyes that look on at Lance with disappointment.

Hunk gasps in shock. “Is that –is that _me?”_

No one says a thing as they watch not-Hunk shake his head sadly. “I’m so disappointed in you, Lance.”

It’s Hunk’s voice. It’s Hunk’s eyes, his armour, his face, his nose, his mouth opening and closing as he says those words that visibly cut into Lance.

“No,” Hunk whispers, shaking his head vehemently. “No, Lance, no I’m not!”

But it’s no use. This is a video recording. Everything that they’re watching happening has already come to pass. All they can do is stand by, and watch as Lance’s lip trembles, arms lowering from wielding the arrow.

“Hunk –” and Keith wants to tear a hole through the wall at the pain in Lance’s voice. “Buddy, buddy you can’t mean that –we’re friends, we’re best friends!”

Not-Hunk frowns at him, looking on with disdainful pity. “Why would I want to be friends with you? You’re annoying.”

Red flickers.

The Hunk beside them whimpers, hands going up to pull at his hair as he mutely shakes his head again, tears glistening on his cheeks. “No, no, I’d never say that –I’d never say that!”

No one can say anything to comfort him, all too horrifically engrossed as they watch not-Hunk shrink, thin, getting smaller, yellow bleeding into green, ruffled hair messy in the same way their Pidge’s is, even though this –this isn’t _her._ Keith hears quiet footfalls come to a stop beside him, but he can’t tear his eyes away from fake-Pidge on the screen, sneering at Lance.

“Did you really believe me when I said you’re my brother?” she scoffs. “Seriously? That’s fucking imbecilic, even for you, Lance. I only did it to get your lazy ass moving because we need Voltron.”

Pidge inhales sharply. “Fuck that,” she croaks. “That’s not –that’s not me. That’s _not me.”_

Allura comes to stand by Pidge’s side, bringing her closer with an arm wrapped around Pidge’s shaking shoulders as the rest watch something in Lance breaking at fake-Pidge’s words.

“Pidge, no,” Lance pleads, desperate, the hold he has on the bowstring loosening. “Please, please, you can’t mean that.”

“I really do, Lance,” she snarls harshly. “You’re just a seventh wheel, and a useless one at that. You can’t do anything. You’re only here because you were conveniently there in the cave when we found Blue.”

Red simmers.

Pidge becomes Shiro, and the real Shiro starts at that, eyes widening as they watch fake-Shiro step forward menacingly, such contempt and hatred in those stormy grey eyes that Keith’s breath is taken away at the sight. When Keith looks at the real Shiro beside him, he’s trembling from head to toe, little flickers of purple running up and down his Galra arm, so pale he could almost match the white flop of hair that is testament to the vile experiments the Druids did on him.

“But you couldn’t even keep yourself out of Galra hands,” not-Shiro continues, picking up from where fake-Pidge left off.

“Sh –Shiro?” Lance stammers.

Not-Shiro’s lips curl. “You let yourself get captured. You couldn’t even protect yourself without us there, covering for your incompetence.”

“What are you –” Lance cuts off, visibly shaking as he backs away from not-Shiro. His arms tremble, but he only lifts the arrow back up when not-Shiro’s Galra arm starts to glow, a familiar purple light that has bile coating the back of Keith’s throat.

Not-Shiro comes up short when Lance aims the arrow right at his heart. The metal arrowhead shakes but holds steady enough to keep not-Shiro from coming any closer, even as pure devastation writes itself across Lance’s face, his blue eyes watering to oceans heaving under the lashes of rain pouring from the sky.

“Shiro, stop,” he begs hoarsely. “Please, please stop, you have to stop.”

Not-Shiro shakes his head with a snarled, “At least Allura can take over flying Blue now, like she was supposed to, if you weren’t there.”

“No! Blue –Blue chose me!” Lance yells, his face _imploding_ with pain. “She chose _me_ to pilot her!”

Shiro tips his head to the side. “Why else do you think Blue isn’t talking to you?”

Red boils.

Keith jerks when he sees himself on the screen, his face twisted in an expression of pure hatred that he simply doesn’t recognize, because never, _never_ could he look at Lance like that. Keith can’t breathe around the stone in his throat as he watches his bayard, _his bayard,_ transform into his sword, even with Lance’s arrow pointed right at his heart.

“No,” he whispers, so quiet that he knows he’s the only one to hear the pain in his own voice. “No, Lance, that’s not me. That’s _not me.”_

But Lance can’t hear him.

Because this already happened.

“I thought your powers could give us the upper hand in this war, but I guess not.” Fake-Keith’s words snap like a whip, with all the intent of drawing blood. He takes a step forward, lifting his sword, and Lance scurries back, but fake-Keith follows, not giving him a chance to escape. “You’re more of a liability. Even with magic, you’re just a _useless cargo pilot.”_

Red bleeds, and this time, blue doesn’t flicker back. Allie’s strangled cry of, _“Lance, no!”_ is lost to Keith as he gapes at Lance. Lance, whose eyes are crimson like glowing red suns, whose lips turn up in a sharp smile, whose face remains the same but becomes something, _someone,_ else.

In one smooth movement, Lance (Lance?) shoves the arrow back in its quiver and blinks from his spot to stand behind fake-Keith. His hands glide down the length of the tall bow, gripping the end and swinging it at fake-Keith’s exposed back like a baseball bat, sweeping it out with such strength that fake-Keith is knocked right off his feet and sent sprawling to the ground. Between one second and the next, fake-Keith melts away and becomes Edmynun the Narganiann, coughing sand out of their mouth as they scramble to their feet.

Lance(?)’s teeth pull back in a vicious snarl. “Oho, did you think you’d fool us by using his ‘friends’ meat suits? Did you think Lancey-Lance was so weak that he’d just let himself be killed by the likes of _you?_ Just roll over and _die?”_

Before the Narganiann can do anything, Lance blinks to stand incredibly close to Edmynun. Their eyelids pulling back, mouth popping open, is the only hint to its shock before Lance reaches out with one hand and shoves Edmynun –and sends him flying through the air until he crashes into a large boulder with an impossible strength, hard enough to break an ordinary humans’ bones.

“You,” Lance stalks forward like a panther, swinging his bow in circles at his side languidly, almost lazy. _“You,_ when we have faced the Beast and _lived.”_

Edmynun holds one of their hands up, pleading. Blood dribbles down the side of their mouth, coating the back of their hairless head, and they are entirely covered in dust and scratches from the painful landing. Edmynun makes a pitiful picture that even Keith’s rage dies down at that, but Lance…he doesn’t seem to care for that in the least. His eyes blaze a blood red that is unforgiving.

“Please,” Edmynun begs. “I only do this to keep my family safe.”

Lance comes to a halt a foot from the Narganiann. He cocks his head to the side curiously.

“‘Family’?” he echoes. “Why should we give a shit about that?”

That’s when they know that who they’re seeing on the screen, wearing Lance’s body, isn’t Lance.

Lance has been fighting this war to get back to his family. Lance cares more for his family than they’ve seen him care for anything else. Lance has such intense bouts of homesickness that everyone knows when to leave him alone, when he needs his space, and when to be around him and remind him that’s he’s not alone, that there are people who care about him. Lance is the one who has risked his life several times on different missions where families were involved, doing everything he possible could to ensure that those families stayed together, no matter the risk to himself.

Lance would never disregard someone’s family, even with no relation to him at all.

“Allie,” Shiro says, his voice barely above a whisper, eyes glued to the screen in utter shock. “What’s happening?”

She doesn’t answer, but Keith sees her gripping her necklace tight enough for the metal to cut skin. Everyone turns back to the screen when a strangled cry of pain breaks out. Keith’s blood runs cold.

Lance is standing over Edmynun, gripping the shaft of an arrow he has buried in the alien’s shoulder, brutally twisting it with a manic grin on his face as Edmynun cries out, begging him to stop, blood gushing from the wound. Edmynun’s tail lashes out, and Lance’s face breaks out in glee as he lets go of the arrow, nimbly jumping over the tail and cartwheeling backwards in a smooth movement reminiscent of how Allie moved when she kicked at Allura.

He comes up grinning, bouncing on the balls of his feet, swiftly pulling out a second arrow and sliding it into place. Edmynun freezes in the process of trying to pull themselves to standing. Lance’s smile is cruel as he closes one eye, making a show of pointing the arrow at different points of the alien’s quavering, tense body.

He hums thoughtfully. “Where should we hit next? Hey, what’d you say? How do ya feel about losing an arm? It’s not like you don’t have enough, yeah?”

Before Edmynun can move to get away, the arrow is loosed and embeds in their other shoulder, driven so fast and so deep in that the alien is pinned to the boulder behind them, at risk of losing their arm if they try to move. Fat tears roll down their eyes as they whimper pitifully, quiet pleas falling from their lips as they fearfully watch Lance dance over to them, pulling out a dagger from his boot and brushing the flat edge over the tears.

“Mhm,” Lance smiles, sickly sweet. “You made a mistake, didn’t you? You picked the wrong person to hunt. _Unfortunately_ for you, Lance comes with so, so much baggage,” he sings. “And we are in each,” Lance draws the blade down the line of tears on one cheek. “And every,” he does the same on the other. “Bag.”

All the crazed mirth in his face drops at that. A stone cold mask, unfeeling and hard, falls on Lance’s features, his red eyes the only thing remotely alive about him, remotely feeling. Lance flips the blade so that he catches it holding the hilt with the dagger lining up with his arm, and slashes up so quick that for one long, unmoving second, nothing and no one moves. Edmynun stares up at Lance in horror, while Lance looks on with complete apathy.

A bloody red smile grows on Edmynun’s neck, a smile that starts to leak, running down in rivulets. The Narganiann starts choking, wet, clogged sounds that are forced out of their slit throat, the two arms not immobilized by arrows coming up to weakly try and stop the blood from flowing. Edmynun sputters as Lance stands right where he is, watching as Edmynun’s blood dribbles down the alien’s pink neck in thin trickles that paint their body in splatters of red. The cut is deep enough to get the blood flowing, to make it look bad, the fear in Edmynun’s eyes doubling the atrocity of what just happened.

But Lance didn’t cut deep enough to slit the Narganiann’s throat. Just enough to make sure Edmynun understands his mistake.

Without warning, Lance reaches up to the ratty grey crop shirt of his prisoner uniform, and tears out a long strip with his dagger, holding the end between his teeth. He tears the last bit of it off, gives Edmynun a hard look with those strange crimson eyes, and mutters something that’s too low for the video recording device to catch. Edmynun still looks shaky, _terrified,_ eyes like black orbs popping out of their sockets, so pale their skin is almost translucent. Lance says something again, still too quiet, and warily, Edmynun nods.

He slowly reaches around and ties the strip of cloth around Edmynun’s neck, to staunch the flow of blood. He does it tight enough to stop the flow, but not so much that Edmynun can’t breathe around it. Then he rises. He grips the arrows he shot into Edmynun’s shoulders in both hands, then yanks them out of the stone with an inhuman strength, throwing the bloodied arrows to the side. Edmynun cries out as they fall to the ground, curling in on themselves, trying to get as small as possible, shivering with their body wracked in heaving sobs.

For a moment, Lance just stares at the Narganiann impassively. It’s like his body has turned to stone. He doesn’t even look like he’s breathing, and he stays like this long enough for Keith to hear Pidge’s quiet sniffles, Hunk’s louder blubbers, Allura and Coran whispering to each other in rapid-fire Altean, Shiro silent as a mountain, and Allie’s frantic whispering in Spanish that sounds like a prayer.

Then Lance spins around, gripping his bow tight as he stalks to the middle of the arena.

“COME ON!” Lance yells, the vision of a bloodthirsty god of war as he raises his arms up, calling to the crowds, to the Galra dwarf staring down at him in unabashed shock. They weren’t expecting this. His yell has everyone on the bridge snapping out of their kayoed shock. _“COME ON,_ YOU GALRA SONS OF BITCHES! IS THAT ALL YOU’VE GOT?”

Quick as lightning, Lance whips out another arrow and nocks it, tipping the bow up and releasing it in less than two seconds, his back arching perfectly, the picture of strength and death. The arrow is a purple-silver metallic streak that shoots forward so fast that it is a mere blur. The podium the dwarf Galra stands on is engulfed in a wave of electricity that crackles over it as the arrow shoots right through the bottom of the podium and into the Galra’s foot, pinning the shrieking dwarf to the podium as it lists to the side and starts descending in a billowing cloud of fire.

Lance spins around with another arrow nocked in place, and aims it right at the camera taking the video. Keith feels something wiggle in his chest as those red eyes seem to look right through to him, yet another crazed smile on his face a second before Lance pulls the bowstring and releases the arrow. The blur of purple metal flies through the air with deadly intent, and Keith can understand the Narganiann’s fear when Lance was aiming the arrow at them; if Lance was pointing it at Keith right now, he’d lose all hope of survival.

The screen blacks out.

Allura is the first to speak into the silence. She seems the only one even slightly capable of it, despite the way her hands close and open in fists at her side, the confused look in her wide eyes, the way her lips tremble ever so slightly.

“That,” she starts, turning to Allie, seeking answers from the only person who might know them. “That –that was not the Lance we know.”

“Was it the Galra?” Shiro asks quietly. He doesn’t look at any of them, gaze still fixed on the screen as he continues, “Can they do something like that to him?”

“No,” Coran replies. He sounds so sad, so sorrowful, that all Keith wants to do is run away from it. Instead he looks away, watching Pidge’s shoulders shake as she quickly walks back to her station. She wipes the tears staining her glasses and shoves them back on, hunching over her laptop, fingers flying over the keyboard so fast that they blur as she works to get the video’s source. “The Druids have attempted mind control before, but reports have the victims’ eyes turning yellow as a result. Not red.”

“Then what the hell was that?” Keith asks thickly. He spins around, glaring at Allie, because if it’s not the Galra, then this must have something to do with her, with what she’s refused to tell them about her and Lance’s past. “What the _fuck_ was that?!”

Allie turns to them, stepping back a little, almost as if she feels threatened by Keith’s furious scowl. She looks nervous; _scared._

“I –I can’t –”

Keith growls, stomping over to her and barely restraining himself from throwing something, anything. No one tries to stop him, because this time, they all know that they need answers. “You don’t get to fucking say that anymore. You saw what just –you saw what he _did,_ he almost _killed_ that alien, and that’s –that’s not Lance. It’s _not him,_ so tell us what the hell is going on!”

Where she would normally get on the defence, Allie instead deflates, completely. Everything about her seems to fall out of place, like a vase falling to the ground and the broken pieces scattering all over the floor. All the fire and life fades out of her eyes as she glances back at the screen, tears glistening in her eyes, before looking back at the team.

“You saw the way his eyes changed.” She says slowly, so low that everyone has to strain to hear. “You heard the way he was talking. For now all you need to know is that there are voices in his head, voices he has to consciously keep a tight leash on all the time. It’s another function his necklace has –to keep the voices controlled. I’m –our necklaces are connected so that I can balance him out, help him as much as I can.”

Wait, what? Voices?

Shiro frowns. “What do you mean?”

Allie bites her lips. She looks like she wants to run away, as much as Keith feels like it, but she doesn’t. She stands her ground as she says, “I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not a mental disorder. These voices, they’re real. They are real, and they are violent, and full of hatred, and tied to him and his magic in a way that they can’t be removed. If he loses control because of what those -those Galra are doing to him, the voices will take over his body. They’ve already started to.”

 “What happens if they take over?”

“He –he gets like that.” She answers, weakly gesturing at the blackened screen. “He can’t –once Lance loses control, he just –he blacks out, he doesn’t remember anything of what the voices make him do.”

“Has this happened before?” Hunk asks in a hushed voice, breath hiccupping.

Allie nods slowly. “Once. When we were fifteen, he –they took over, and I didn’t see my brother again for six months after that. He doesn’t remember what happened, or what he did.”

Everyone stares at Allie, shocked into silence at her words. Their whole world is being ripped apart in a matter of days, hours, minutes, _seconds,_ and everyone is left reeling. No one knows how to even _react,_ what to say, what to think. In Keith’s mind, the video replays on a loop he can’t pause or stop, an iron band clothed in slippery velvet wrapping tight around his body as his mind rewinds to the look of utter devastation on Lance’s face at fake-Keith’s words, and then the way he –the way he seemed to completely _break._ Like he was shattering into a million pieces that could never be fixed back in place.

And those eyes. Those blood red eyes, so full of hate and malice, set in a face twisted into spite and anger, almost _killing_ someone in that rage.

“Please,” Allie’s voice warbles as she speaks into the silence. There are tears, in her eyes. Keith would find the sight pretty, in a way, the way the electric blue waters, like lightning flashing over the sea, if he could stop imagining those eyes bleeding into red, that jaw become firmer, the body harder. “Please, we have to –”

Allie is cut off by Pidge calling out to them from her terminal, faint surprise in her voice. “Guys, we’re being hailed by a Galra ship. I think –I think it’s the one Lance is on.” She gulps. “It matches the source code of the video.”

Allura turns to the team as Coran moves to his console and begins preparing to answer the call. “Pidge, where are you on finding the source of the transmissions?”

“The video cut out too soon,” Pidge replies, trying to smoothen the frazzled edges of her nerves into professionalism, like Allura is. “I needed at least a couple more min –uh, dobashes. Answering that call will speed things up.”

Allura nods shakily. “Continue working on that. Allie, stay out of sight of whoever we’re about to talk to.”

“But –”

Allura shoots her a hard look. “I said, stay out of sight. You look too much like Lance, and if the Galra realize he has family here, they could manipulate him into thinking they have you, and use the very idea of you against him. No matter what happens, no matter what you see, you do not let yourself be seen by the Galra. You will stay back, or you will leave this room. Do I make myself clear, Allie?”

With an irritant frown that isn’t quite so harsh and unforgiving as usual, Allie nods and moves to stand by the wall.

“Everyone,” Allura continues, looking to each and every one of her Paladins. Shiro, standing at her side, providing support, slipping on the mask of leader to conceal the turbulent emotions Keith knows are raging inside him. Hunk, desperately trying to stop the flow of his tears with his headband. Pidge at her station, glasses glinting off the light of her laptop’s screen, highlighting the dark circles nestled under her eyes.

And Keith, trembling with a fury that fuels a deep-seated fire in him, lighting his body up with the need to get Lance back, and to hurt any and all Galra that have harmed Lance, have driven him to the point that these, these _voices_ have broken through. Confusion is there too, that Lance could think those things that the Narganiann used against him, and hurt, that Lance has kept this, and _so much more_ from them all, but he shoves that aside. It can be dealt with later. Later, after they get their blue boy back.

Allura gives them all as encouraging a smile as she can muster. “All right, team. Prepare yourselves for whatever we see. I’m accepting the call now.”

“Ready when you are, Princess.” Shiro affirms. The harsh quality to his words belie just how tremulous that preparedness is.

Allura nods at a wan Coran, who returns the nod with one of his own. His hand taps on his controls, and they all turn to the view screen that flickers for a moment before an image settles on it.

The smirking face of a Galra clad in Commander uniform looks back at them, yellow eyes flicking between each individual on his screen. The Galra is standing in a room with purple lights lining the upper walls, illuminating most of the room yet throwing everything in a hazy kind of shadow that makes it difficult to discern anything of the room itself.

“Greetings, Princess Allura of Altea. Paladins of Voltron,” he nods courteously at the rest of the team standing tense behind Allura, strategically shielding Pidge from view so that they don’t realize she’s breaking down the coordinates of the Galra ship while they talk. The Galra speaks as if they’re all good friends chatting over Skype. As if he doesn’t have one of their own fighting in the arena, and who knows what else. “I must say, it is a pleasure to meet you. I am Commander Radnak of the twenty-fourth battalion of the empire.”

“You’ll understand when I say the pleasure is _not_ mine.” Allura retorts sharply. She lifts her chin imperiously. “Return the Blue Paladin to us, immediately.”

Radnak gives her an amused look. “You must know my answer will be a negative, little princess. I am under orders to bring Lance McClain to the Emperor’s Central Command, you see.”

Keith’s lips pull back over his teeth. He doesn’t want this Galra _speaking_ Lance’s name. His eyes flick to the side when he catches a flash of light in his periphery, and he sees Allie trembling at her place by the wall, hands in fists at her sides, shaking and sparking with golden lights, like she’s barely able to keep a leash on her magic. Keith’s gaze slides back to Radnak; he wonders if the Galra would be so presumptuous if Allie was loosed on him.

If she fights anything like how feral she looks now, he’d feel almost sorry for Radnak messing with her brother. Almost.

Allura doesn’t look at all surprised at the rejection. “Then what do you want? What was the purpose of sending us that video?” she leans forward, a light in her eye that Keith has only seen when she is truly angry. “Why are you calling us now? To taunt us?”

Radnak shrugs. “The Blue Paladin has proven to be quite lethal, almost manically violent, wouldn’t you say?” he simpers. “Even better than the Champion ever was. Are you sure it shouldn’t be Lance here serving as the Black Paladin instead?”

“That is none of your concern, Galra.” She dismisses, showing her contempt for his very existence by refusing to speak his name.

Radnak’s lips twitch slightly, and Keith wonders if Allura’s hit a sore spot with that.

“I thought the Paladin’s resilience would prove more useful elsewhere. Would you care for an example of that resilience?” Radnak’s tone gets decidedly darker, and the gleam in his eye can only be seen as evil. “I’m sure you’ll agree.”

He steps aside, and the team collectively gasp at the sight.

Lance is hanging by his wrists, manacles around them and connected to chains in the ceiling, his ankles receiving the same treatment with the chains drilled into the ground. He is slumped over, unconscious, head lolling forward limply so that they can’t see his face. He is still dressed in prisoner clothes, only he’s barefoot this time, and the clothes hang a little looser on his lithe frame than before. The only hint that he is alive is the rise and fall of his chest, his shoulders faintly mimicking the move.

A second after they have a chance to see that it’s Lance, alive, a soldier steps into the screen’s view, carrying a pail of what must be water. He flings the water straight at Lance, who awakens with a shout as he’s drenched from head to foot, sputtering as he spits the water out from his mouth, the chains clanking from his rough movement at the awakening.

The iron band eases its hold over Keith’s chest when he sees that the eyes looking around wildly around the room as Lance swings a little on the chains from his movements are blue. Tired, pale blue, like a melting ice mass, but _blue._

But his pupils are massively dilated, almost swallowing the blue up until they’re just rings around the black. Lance’s taut muscles are wracked in fine shivers, and Keith can only guess at how cold the water must be for Lance’s teeth to chatter like that, his breath coming out in short, harsh gasps.

“Hello, Blue Paladin,” Radnak greets cheerily, grating Keith’s ears like nails on a blackboard. “It’s good to have you back with the living.”

Lance blearily focuses on Radnak, squinting as if through smoke. “Did you say something? Sorry, I couldn’t hear you over your enormous ego. Bigger than the Chrysler Building, I swear.” He tops it off with a smirk that falls just flat of its usual cockiness.

Keith doesn’t know if he should be happy that smartass Lance is back, or fear the repercussions for the aleck.

“Lance –Lance!” Hunk calls out, unable to help himself at the sight of his friend, trussed up and hanging from chains like some piece of meat than a person.

Keith frowns when Lance doesn’t react. It’s like he hasn’t heard Hunk calling out to him. His gaze doesn’t exactly waver from glaring at Radnak, but he can’t seem to focus on the Commander for long enough before his eyes slide away, attention slipping. Lance has always been a little scatterbrained, finding it a little difficult to keep his mind focused on one thing rather than getting distracted by dozens of other things he notices –but it’s not like this.

“Lance?” Shiro tries, and still, no reaction.

“Why –why isn’t he looking at us? Can’t he hear us?” Hunk whispers, pressing the back of his hand to muffle his sobs. “What have they done to him?”

“I believe they’ve drugged him,” Coran mutters.

Allura adds quietly, “Or sedated him, at the least.”

Radnak is seemingly as oblivious to their words as Lance is, because he doesn’t even look back at them. They can’t see his face as he stands in front of Lance. He clasps his hands behind his back, almost like a dutiful soldier paying respect to his superior.

“Interesting, isn’t it?” Radnak comments. His hand moves up and gestures at his own yellow eyes. “Your eyes have been turning red every once in a while over the last few days. Naturally, they appear to be blue. Care to tell me why?”

Lance spits in his face.

Radnak, or what they can see of him, hardly moves. He simply reaches up and wipes the spit from his face as Lance bares his teeth in a barbaric grin at him, a look that is more like _the other Lance_ than the boy they all know.

“Hm.” Radnak sighs heavily, almost mournfully. “I did so hope your stint in the arena would make you more pliable, but, it is quite exalting to see you so…brave, considering your current predicament.”

Radnak’s words are like some kind of disgusting sludge touching his skin, and Keith resists the urge to shiver as he forces himself to pay attention to the video, trying to find something, _anything,_ that can get Lance out of there. He knows it’s useless to try, Pidge is the one who’s decoding the source location of this video transmission, and all any of them can do is wait for her to crack it. That doesn’t mean Keith can just sit back and _watch_ this happening without at least _trying_ to pick something out.

Radnak turns to the side and slowly makes his way to a table situated on the wall to Lance’s right. When he turns his back, Lance visibly sags against his restraints, the attempt at bravado fading away to something small, and scared, and alone. The dark circles under his eyes sit like grey clouds that conceal the bright blue sky of the day. Keith can’t stop himself from remembering the steely grit in them as blood dribbled down his nose a second before he teleported everyone off Ladene.

Radnak faces Lance again, who quickly dons his arrogant mask once more. Keith’s breath halts in his chest; in Radnak’s hands is the long, coiled length of a whip. The lash snaps out as Radnak flicks his wrist out, and purple electricity dancing across its length when Radnak presses a small button on the whip’s handle.

Lance’s eyes widen at the sight of the whip. His entire body tenses like a bowstring drawn taught. Keith’s blood boils, his hands shaking at his sides, and all he wants is to punch Radnak’s face in, beat him bloody until this sick Galra’s eyes are swollen shut and teeth broken and filling his mouth, choking him until he dies.

“I’m sure you know the drill, Blue Paladin. I am going to ask you some questions,” Radnak approaches Lance slowly, every step measured, coiling the whip back to its original state as he comes to stand in front of Lance again. “And you are going to answer them.”

“And I’m sure _you_ know the drill. What if I don’t?” Lance sneers, but Keith can see it –he can see the faintest tremble in Lance’s chained hands, a shake that isn’t from the cold water. “Or, hey, how about this –what if you go _fuck yourself_ and drop dead?”

Radnak _tsk_ s. “Really, is that how you want to talk in front of your team?”

“My –” Lance cuts himself off when Radnak steps to the side and gestures behind him, to the camera, right to the team, all staring back, wanting to look away from their friends’ suffering, but unable to.

For a moment, no one is sure if Lance sees them. He squints blearily, eyes darting about like he’s trying to figure out where they are. Then something seems to click as Lance meets Keith’s eyes, and they widen, relief filling them, lips trembling as a cracked smile breaks through.

“Hey, guys,” Lance croaks. “You’re –you’re all safe.”

“Is he fucking joking,” Pidge whispers, the tapping of her fingers on the keyboard momentarily ceasing.

Keith wants to murder someone. Safe? ‘You’re all safe’? _That’s_ the first thing Lance says when he sees them? You’re all safe, when no, not all of them are safe, because one of them is stuck on a Galra ship, at the mercy of a possibly sadistic Galra with an electric whip in his hands.

He doesn’t know how he’s standing at this point. He wants to do so many things as he watches Lance taking in the others at his sides; he wants to scream in frustration because Lance isn’t here for Keith to rail on for pulling that bullshit, self-sacrificing _bullshit._ He wants to cry because of the way Lance looked when all those mirages of the team were telling him such horrible things, pulling out his deepest fears and insecurities and throwing them back in Lance’s face like stones meant to break bone and crush skin. He wants to see Radnak dead at his feet for everything he’s put Lance through.

But more than anything, he just wants to bring Lance back home.

He wants to see Lance with Hunk, cooking and baking and hanging out in the common room. He wants to see Lance with Pidge in her lab or at her station, helping her out and teasing her. He wants to see Lance with Shiro and Allura, listening intently to what the Black Paladin says while flirting outrageously with Allura.

He wants to see Lance and Coran walking through the Castle or in the star-map room, telling each other stories of their families. He wants to see Lance together with Allie, the twin sister he never mentioned, to see how well they fit together. He wants to be with Lance in the training room, sparring, groaning at Lance’s stupid puns and jokes, and flying in their Lions together, racing through the burning light of the stars that don’t hold a candle to the excitement and determination in Lance’s eyes that comes with the adrenaline rush of flying.

He just –he just wants Lance here. He wants Lance to keep his promise and _not leave._

“Lance,” says Shiro, and they all hear the pain in his voice, the grief that Lance had to fight in an arena he knows too well. “Lance, can you –”

Shiro doesn’t get a chance to say any more. In the few seconds they’d just stared at Lance in a stupor while he smiled at them, a smile that breaks their hearts, Radnak moves to stand behind Lance. Their only warning for what’s about to happen is the crackle of electricity, the sound of something long and thin slashing through the air. Lance’s face contorts in pain as a broken cry tears itself from his throat, chains jangling as his limbs jolt and his back arches from the blow to his back.

Keith flinches, almost like he was the one on the receiving end of the blow. He can’t keep his silence anymore, taking an involuntary step forward, arms lifting as if he can reach in and pull Lance through the screen and into safety as he calls out to him. “Lance! _Lance!_ Look at me!”

_Pay attention to me, don’t hurt, ignore the pain, look at me, see me, don’t hurt don’t hurt don’t hurt don’t_

Shiro’s hand clasping his shoulder is the only thing grounding Keith to reality as the electric spasms die out, Lance’s arms and legs twitching as he sinks, panting heavily, blinking through the pain.

“Where is Voltron?” Radnak demands, paying no heed to Allura yelling for him to stop this _immediately._

Lance lifts his head slowly, hazily fixing his eyes on Keith, almost as if he heard his desperate, silent plea. His teeth are stained red when his lips crack open in a collapsing smile. “Bite me.”

Purple energy lights the room as Radnak coils the whip and snaps it out again to tear over Lance’s back. This time Lance can’t stop himself from screaming, a raw sound that claws at Keith’s ears and sets his blood on fire.

“Where is the Blue Lion?” Radnak asks, again waiting for the spasms in Lance’s body to subside for a brief moment.

Lance doesn’t have the strength to quip back anymore, limbs shaking as he sags heavily in the chains keeping him aloft. He is barely heard as he whispers hoarsely, “No.”

Behind Lance, Radnak’s eyes are full of unrestrained, frenzied glee as he brings the whip down on Lance’s back again. Keith staggers forward, barely held back by Shiro, deaf to his words, blind to the others’ faces. He has to –he has to do _something._ He can’t watch this anymore, he can’t watch this happen to Lance anymore, he can’t he can’t he _can’t_

Then Allie is there.

Allie, in all her unrestrained fury, and fear, tears streaming down her face, hair loosened in a wild mane of curls that fall around her like a storm unleashed. Allura tries to say something to her, to make her step back, but Allie completely ignores her. She tries to run to the screen, as if to physically get to Lance that way, but then Hunk and Shiro grab her arms to stop her from getting any closer.

 _“TELL HIM!”_ Allie screams, kicking out as both Shiro and Hunk struggle to hold her back. “Hermano, tell him!”

Lance’s head jerks up at the sound of her voice, jaw dropping when he sees her. Looking at his sister shouldn’t scare Lance as much as Keith sees it does, from the widening of his eyes, the sheer look of total and unadulterated _fear_ that fills them to the brim.

His lips tremble as they part, his whisper barely audible as he says, “A –Allie?”

“Oh?” Radnak steps around Lance, not blocking him from view, but enough that he can see Allie clear as day. “What’s this I see?” he peers curiously at her. “You two look remarkably alike.”

“Tell him what he wants to know!” she yells again, completely ignoring Radnak as she yanks at her arms and tries to escape from Shiro and Hunk’s hold, failing. The tears on her cheeks glisten like a line of melted silver painting her skin as she cries, “Please, Alejandro, come back, _come back.”_

Keith will never know if what happens next is set off by her plea. He will never know if her sudden appearance in space when she’s supposed to be safe on Earth is what triggers Lance. He will never know if the idea of the threat posed to Allie now that the Galra know of her existence is what sparks the flame inside Lance, a flame that burns and rages through everything it touches.

Radnak walks across the screen, keeping a close, watchful eye on Allie as he reaches the opposite wall, whip crackling as he coils it up. Before Radnak passes in front of Lance, his eyes are a wide, terrified blue. When Lance reappears again after Radnak walks across, Lance is smiling –

–his eyes are not blue anymore.

The smile on Lance’s face now is unlike his usual smile. There is no brightness beyond that of madness, no teasing curl to the sharp grin beyond that of mockery. His teeth are bared in a savage grin that sends chills down the spines of everyone watching.

Lance rattles the chains binding him, and the noise has Radnak turning to him, yellow eyes narrowing when they see the blue gone, the red there, the hurting weakness gone, the mocking smile there. His voice, when he speaks, is both not his own and his alone. It is full of dark promises, just like the malice burning in eyes gone blood red. Lance tips his head to the side, lazily regarding Radnak, ignoring the whimper that sounds at the back of Allie’s throat, like she’s an injured animal.

“Hey, just out of curiosity,” his voice is a little hoarse from screaming, but somehow still flows like velvet soaked in poison. “How long do you think you can keep us chained?”

Radnak says nothing, whatever expression on his face being hidden as he looks at Lance, half-turned toward him and away from the team. Then he nods shortly, tilting his head to the side a little, not quite focused on Lance. Keith startles when a shadow melts out of a dark corner behind Lance. Ice fills his veins when the figure steps forward, clad in dark brown robes that cover the entirety of its body, and a bone mask with six slits for eyes.

Druid.

Lance (not Lance? Who Lance?) barely has time to register the new presence in the room before the Druid reaches up to grip Lance’s head between its clawed, scaly hands. His eyes roll back in his head and he droops, instantly knocked unconscious. Keith doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or not. Whatever’s about to happen, it looks like Radnak and the Druid were waiting for this –waiting for this other Lance to reappear.

A screen, not unlike the one the Paladins see each other’s memories in during their mind-meld exercises, flickers to life just a few feet in front of Lance, in easy sight of Radnak, the Druid, and the whole team watching in astounded, grievous silence.

A face appears on the screen. At first, it looks like it’s Lance, younger, the cheekbones not quite so accentuated as they are now, jaw not so defined, cheeks still a little chubby. But the hair is too long, coloured with too many sunny streaks of light brown to be Lance. Keith blinks in surprise when he realizes that this isn’t Lance –it’s Allie.

Allie, when the two were younger. Allie, with rounded, human ears, that hardened edge in her eyes of the nineteen-year-old replaced with terror and determination thrown together in one chaotic mix that shouldn’t be contained by a ten-year-old.

In the same instant his stomach rolls nauseatingly when he sees little Lance wet with rain that falls from the dark skies overhead, and he realizes what this is. The Druid is going through Lance’s memories, and it’s –it must be showing Lance in the memory rather than from his eyes because this isn’t like the mind-meld exercise at all. This is someone literally prying through Lance’s mind, searching for answers, to what questions, he doesn’t know.

A loud yell snaps Keith’s attention back to little Allie, to see her driving a dagger that flashes silver in the low lamplights lining the street into a formless _thing_ made entirely of shadows, screeching in pain. It lashes out with a tail wreathed in shadows, stumbling back from Lance where it was pinning him to the wall, strangling him. Lance falls to the ground, knees buckling under him as Allie lands painfully on her back after being knocked back by the creature’s tail. It howls in agony as it turns on Allie, but before it can make a step toward her, it solidifies, shadows writhing over its body turning to sand as the creature collapses in a cloud of dust at Allie’s feet.

“Hermanito,” Allie’s voice is murky through the screen, softer, younger than the Allie of now. She painstakingly gets to her feet, legs wobbling as she stumbles to her brother. She falls to her knees beside him as he coughs and hacks, his neck pink and bruised with claw marks. “Alejandro, Lance, Lance, estás bien?”

The scene shifts.

This time, Lance is standing in what looks like a training room, floors and walls and ceiling made of a warm wood that invites, despite the shelved rows on one wall advertising a large array of weapons, so many different types that Keith is almost dizzy looking them all. Lance looks about fourteen here, dressed in simple grey slacks and a matching t-shirt that sits loose on his wiry frame. He spins a golden staff of his height around his waist, wielding it so expertly that Keith is left speechless at the way the staff blurs into gold flashes around his body.

Standing opposite Lance is a tall man, somewhere in his late twenties or early thirties, dressed in similar clothing to Lance, although his are black to Lance’s grey. His red hair is pulled back in a bun that sits at his nape, hands held up in a loose defensive stance as Lance smirks at him.

The man’s voice is thick with an Irish accent as he sasses, “I am nine-hundred-years-old, ye cocky little bastard. I don’t care about anyone, didn’t you know?”

“Oh yeah, Fergus?” young Lance cajoles. “Then why does Sarah, and I swear to the gods she does this –why does she _giggle_ every time you enter a room?”

The man, Fergus, gives Lance a flat stare. “I’ll pay you fifty quid to never mention that to anyone, ever.”

“Hundred.”

“Seventy-five.”

 _“Hundred,_ or I tell Michael. You know what the Order thinks about Warlocks and Witches getting together.”

The memory shifts again. This time, Lance is older, not quite the age he was at the Garrison, but not as young anymore. Maybe fifteen, or sixteen. Keith’s face drains of colour at what he sees.

Lance is on the ground, barely conscious, a puddle of blood spreading out under him –but it’s not coming _from_ him. Beside Lance is a body, unmoving, limp, sky blue eyes greyed out as they stare lifelessly up at the dark night. Someone behind Keith, Pidge maybe, gasps when they see the body, because if not for the pallor of death’s paint coating the body’s face, it could be Lance lying there, dead.

There are differences; the man lying there has a slightly sharper nose, his lips are a little plumper, cheekbones more defined than the previous versions of Lance they’ve seen. But for all it counts, the man lying dead there could be Lance. He’s even wearing the same jacket Lance always is, the one Keith rarely sees Lance not wearing. Lance’s eyes are fading from the gold they become when he uses magic, but curiously, Keith notices something strange; the single line of black that cuts through the gold iris of Lance’s left eye isn’t there in the memory.

Keith follows the trail of handprints in the circle of blood surrounding the man, tracking them back to…to Lance.

Lance is lying on his side limply, like his body is physically weighing him down, and when Keith looks closer, his gut twists sickeningly when he sees that Lance’s left leg is bent at an unnatural angle. Lance is dragging his hands back from the pool of blood of the man who looks like a slightly older, a little rougher copy of him.

The blood is smeared over his pale skin, shaking as Lance lifts his hands to stare at them like they’re not his, tears falling down his face in rivers that don’t ever seem to end. His hands drop to the ground limply, as if he can’t hold them up anymore. His head turns, cheeks coming to rest on the gravel of the road he’s on as he stares at the figure gazing impassively down at him.

Keith’s breath catches in his throat.

Ladenian.

That is a _fucking_ _Ladenian,_ on _Earth_ , standing over a bloody Lance lying beside a dead body. A Ladenian whose cold, glacier eyes stare down at Lance from a face that looks like winter incarnate. The Ladenian says nothing as he turns away from Lance’s fearful eyes, and in a cold billow of snow, disappears from sight.

Another memory melts in like water flowing over a smooth riverstone. Lance looks a little older here again, sitting up in a bed with a Justice League blanket strewn across his legs, soft morning light streaming in from a window in the wall the bed is pushed up against, the sound of the sea, _Earth’s_ sea, crashing against the shore in full tide. Lance is almost sickly looking, more like how he’d look as a cancer patient in the antiseptic room of a hospital than in his own bedroom.

He is cradled in the arms of a woman who has his incredibly cerulean eyes, who has Allie’s thick mane of curls tumbling down her back. On the back of her neck is a tattoo identical to the one on Lance’s, only hers is still black. Drops of crystal tears fall from the woman’s eyes, into Lance’s hair as he rests his head limply against her shoulder, blinking slowly as he stares out at the ocean from his window.

Half-folded atop the blanket is a letter. Keith’s eyes widen when he instantly recognizes the official stamp in the top left corner of the paper, remembering it from getting one of his own. A Galaxy Garrison acceptance letter.

“Don’t be a hero, mijo, mi precioso muchacho,” the woman whispers, pressing a kiss to his hair. “Heroes don’t make it home, and you have to survive, Alejandro. You have to live. Tienes que hacerlo, ¿dónde Alex no podia.”

She smooths her hands down the sides of his face and leans back so she can look him in the eye. Her beautiful sapphire eyes are red-rimmed from quiet tears. She smiles sadly at him as he bites his lip. From the door to his room, Keith notices a man’s shifting form. The man has light brown eyes, but the same sharp nose as Lance, the same height that Lance likes to lord over Keith, the same height Allie shares with her brother. He realizes, with a start, that this is Lance’s father.

These are his parents; the ones he loves so much.

“You go to the Garrison, Alejandro,” his mother repeats firmly. “And you become a fighter pilot like you’ve always wanted. You make friends like you’re good at, you build a life of your own. You get away from this war, and you live your life like you should.”

“But what about Allie?” Lance mumbles, his voice hoarse like he hasn’t used it in a while. “How can I just leave like this?”

“You have to, mijo,” his father speaks, walking in from the door to sit on the edge of Lance’s bed beside his mother. “Allie will be fine. She’s Declared herself, and her choice means she won’t be a target anymore. She’s safe in her training in Ireland. But you haven’t yet, and if you remain humano, they’ll always be looking for you.” His father reaches out to cup Lance’s cheek in his palm, turning his head so Lance is looking right into his father’s stern but quietly remorseful eyes. “Pase lo que pase, Lance, debes vivir. Don’t let Alex’s sacrifice mean nothing.”

The words of Lance’s father fade out, and the screen shifts again with another memory. Keith recognizes the dashboard of Blue’s cockpit only because all the Lions are similar that way. Shiro’s voice, the real Shiro, a memory Shiro, is saying over the comms, “Lance, use your ice beam to cover up the canon’s exit, maybe the entirety of it. I’ll try to break through it.”

“Yeah,” Lance replies, white lines bracketing his pursed lips, tension radiating from him in waves as he urges Blue forward. But it’s already too late for that. He remembers.

Keith already knows what memory this is, and a strangled cry of, _“No!”_ is lost to his ears and the cries of his team as they watch Lance unblinkingly shoot forward and bodily block the ion canon from hitting the Castle. Purple light with slivers of black encases the cockpit. Lance’s back arches of the pilot seat as he screams when the ion canon hits Blue, electricity sweeping through the cockpit in pink-purple crackles and engulfing his body.

A surging wave of blue energy, so much like Blue’s quintessence but laced with fragile threads of glittering gold, explodes out from Lance’s body. The energy wraps around him in a thin shield before growing, expanding, shimmering out of Blue’s body. The screen zooms out, jarringly reminding Keith that this already happened, he can’t stop Lance from hurting, that this is a _memory_ the Druid is forcibly taking from Lance, making them all watch in horrific silence.

The Blue Lion comes into view, Lance’s body still seen inside, in that shell of his magic, but there’s a near-invisible shield of faint blue and gold twining around Blue’s body as well, pulsing like a living being. The still spinning hull of a destroyed Galra fighter knocks off of Blue’s underbelly, and they hear a sickening crack and Keith knows, he _knows_ that Lance’s broken rib from that time was because of this. The large wing of another ruined fighter clips Blue’s temple, and Keith feels a sob building at the back of his throat, wet, heavy, aching, when the skin at Lance’s temple splits open, pouring blood.

Now Keith knows. Now he knows why Blue wasn’t so messed up after being hit by the ion canon besides electric technicalities. Lance took on the brunt of the hits she got, with his _own body._

Lance’s eyes snap from blue to red in the memory, but there is no hate or malice there. Another scream rips out of Lance, the red flickering back and forth between red and blue and red and blue, and there is nothing more than pain, pain, pain pain _pain –_

An image flickers across the screen. It’s hazy, and Keith has to squint to try and make something out. The image brightens for a split second before darkening again, but it’s enough for him to see Allie, older, closer to her age now. She’s on a wooden floor, her eyes blown wide open, filled with panic and terror, her mouth parted open in a gasp, warm brown hands at her throat and red eyes staring down into her blues with a sharp grin.

Before the memory can cement itself, can be seen more clearly, a crack splinters the screen in half. A split second later the window shatters, the sound akin to glass breaking as the pieces fall to the ground. Lance growls, a furious black panther, and jerks back, slamming the back of his head right into the Druid’s bone mask, crimson eyes blazing in a craze. The Druid staggers back with a pained grunt, before vanishing from sight in a dark cloud laced through with flashes of purple.

Lance bares his teeth like an animal at Radnak, eyes flaring, rubies dipped in a field of roses and cut by all the thorns. “Fucking try that again, and I’ll break _your_ nose.”

Radnak doesn’t reply as he looks back to the screen the Paladins watch from. He waves his hand sharply in a dismissive gesture, and the last thing they see before the view screen goes dark is Radnak lifting the electric whip, Lance’s face lifted in defiance as he grins like a feral animal down at the Galra.

↭§↭

For a long time, the team are incapable of moving, never mind speaking.

Shiro and Hunk let Allie go, and she sinks to her knees wordlessly, silent as she stares out the bay window, out to the harsh, unforgiving beauty of the stars burning beyond. Everyone else stands frozen where they are, minds gearing in overdrive as they try to understand the sheer insanity of all they’ve just witnessed. Even Pidge, so wholly consumed with the need to find Lance, can’t make herself move, can’t make her brain focus on the task of decrypting what she’s managed to scrounge up from the video transmissions.

“Is this –” Pidge gulps around the boulder lodged in her throat. “Is this –did that seriously just happen? I’m not having some whacked out nightmare from sleep deprivation?”

Does Lance really think he’s a seventh wheel? Does he really think she finds him annoying? Does he really believe Hunk is disappointed in him, finds him annoying? Does he really think Shiro hates him, doesn’t think him worthy of piloting Blue?

Allura nods shakily. “I –I’m afraid it was real, Pidge. All of it.”

“What the hell,” Hunk whispers throatily. “Did we just see?”

“Allie,” it’s Shiro talking now, and Pidge looks away from the blank view screen. Shiro is kneeling in front of an almost catatonic Allie, concern pinching his brow together as he reaches out and gently lays a hand on her shoulder. “Allie, are you okay?”

“Am I okay,” she repeats numbly. “I just watched my brother get tortured for information on a giant robot, and you ask me if I’m okay.” She turns to him, and her words are oddly flat, carrying none of the heat Pidge expects them to. “I just saw Alex dead all over again, I watched Lance relive _all of it_ , and you ask me if I’m okay.”

Alex? Is that the name of the dead man in that last memory? Pidge pales as she remembers his face, the way he looked like an older Lance, wearing the jacket Lance always does, and the way Lance kept Allie’s existence as his twin sister a secret from them all. Jesus, is –was –Alex their older brother?

Slowly, Allie pushes herself to standing, her legs shaking as she turns to face them all. Shiro rises as well, standing close in case she falls, but not so close to invade her personal space. The tears in her eyes glisten like dying stars, falling down her cheeks, dangling over her trembling lips. She reaches up and presses her palms to her cheeks, smudging the clear tracks away as she tries to look at them, but can’t meet their eyes.

“Please,” she whispers in a stuttering breath. “I know –I know Lance has kept –he’s kept a lot of things from you. But he did it to keep –to keep the darkness in our pasts from you. He wants to protect you from it, he loves –he loves all of you. _Please,_ please don’t give upon him.”

“Wait, what?” Pidge speaks up, her voice too thick and strangled for normal.

Allie hiccups, like she’s struggling to breathe. “Please don’t give up on Lance. My family and I, we’re his family by blood, but all of you, you are family by choice. He would do anything to keep you safe –he can’t –my brother, he can’t be strong for himself, he doesn’t know how to, but he can be strong for all of you. In all this time, he _has_ been.”

Though Pidge tries not to, her heart clenches tight in her chest at the desperation in Allie’s voice. She might not like Allie very much (at all) for keeping things from the team, but there’s no way she can ignore the pain of what Allie’s going through. All she has to do is imagine herself in Allie’s shoes, imagine that it’s Matt there, or her father, and she thinks like she knows how Allie feels.

Just seeing Lance there was hard enough, listening to him scream like that, and then seeing those memories of him covered in blood when he was just a kid…Pidge thinks she understands what Allie is going through, but a part of her knows she doesn’t know the half of it. Not yet, at least.

_He’s been through enough!_

That’s what Allie said, after the Blue Lion told her everything. He’s been through enough. What they’ve seen must be part of what Allie meant. Pidge can’t deny being scared of learning the truth behind those memories, those murderous eyes that were not Lance.

“Allie,” she continues weakly. “Do you seriously think we’re just –we’re just gonna _leave_ him there?”

Allie’s not answering is answer enough. Pidge can only stare at her, dumbfounded. What the hell has happened to this girl, to _Lance,_ that she’d think they’d leave Lance alone at the hands of that sick fuck Galra?

Pidge shakes her head vehemently. “There’s no way. There’s _no way_ we’re leaving Lance back there!”

“Look, guys,” Shiro steps forward, holding his hands up as if to physically force everyone to calm down. He turns to each of them, looking them in the eye as he says, “We need to focus right now. We are going to get Lance back, I promise.” At this, he looks at Allie, not turning away until she lifts her eyes to meet his and see the truth of his words there. Slowly, still scared, Allie nods.

Shiro returns the nod and looks back at the team. “The rest comes later –everything we don’t understand right now, we’ll deal with it _later._ But Lance needs us. We need to focus on finding him, then breaking him out of the ship he’s in and bringing him home.”

Everyone nods in agreement, but Pidge notices Keith doesn’t. Keith…he’s not really doing anything. He’s standing right where he was when he called out to Lance, barely a few feet from the view screen, staring out at the bay windows, oblivious to them all.

Does Lance believe that Keith hates him, when that’s the _last_ thing Pidge sees when she looks at Keith and Lance together? When she sees how _Keith_ looks at him when he thinks no one’s watching?

Pidge frowns. When they get him back – _when,_ not if, ‘if’ isn’t even on the table –she’s going to have to figure out something to make Lance realize that he’s needed, that he’s wanted, that they all _love_ him. They all will need to do something different, because if Lance has been hiding these kind of thoughts behind the flirts and mile-wide smiles and loud laughs for over a year, it means they’ve been doing something wrong all this time. Something has to change.

She inches her way to Keith and, carefully, reaches out and touches his arm. That stirs him out of whatever stupor he was trapped in. He blinks at the screen, then looks down at Pidge –but his eyes are cloudy, the amethyst gone a hazy violet that don’t look entirely here.

“Hey,” she says quietly, trying to plaster on a reassuring smile that she doesn’t feel one bit of. “We’ll get him back, okay?”

“Pidge,” Shiro calls. She turns to him, and he looks apologetic for interrupting her, his eyes worriedly flicking to Keith’s rigid form before he focuses on her again. “Where are you with tracking the source of the video?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I know,” she quickly makes her way back to her terminal and settles in again, propping her laptop on her knees and squinting irritably at the lines of code scrolling up on the screen. “But it’s –it’s gonna take me a while.” Pidge smacks her hand on the arm of her chair, frustrated beyond measure. “It’s like a freaking encrypted tor server in the deep web, for god’s sake!”

Pidge will be the first to admit she can break into the goddamned Pentagon in, like, ten minutes, but something like deep web? Heavily encrypted tor servers? That’d take days, and that’s exactly what this Galra-encrypted feed from the video transmissions is looking like. Fuck.

“How long would it take to figure a way around it?”

“Normally it would take me days to crack it, and even if I double the speed it’ll still take me hours.” She runs her hands through her hair roughly, almost knocking her glasses off in the process. “The way the Galra have started added layers on layers of code on all their transmissions, even just for freaking cargo transfers –it’ll take me longer than I think we have to find it.”

Not to mention the fact that the Galra were scrambling their transmission’s signal, bouncing it off of satellite after satellite. If it had been that alone, Pidge _knows_ she would have easily zeroed in on the source of the signal and pinned down exact coordinates of its location in five seconds. But the goddamn _code_ in the transmission itself, that added layer of security, throws a wrench in and just messes everything up, and now it’s going to take more _time_ to find Lance.

_Shit. Shit. Shitshitshitshitshit._

Shiro purses his lips before spinning round to face Allie. “Allie, is there anything you can do to help? Can you track Lance’s magic, in any way?”

Just as Allie is about to answer, Pidge’s tablet clatters to the ground when her elbow knocks it off the arm of her chair as she bolts upright, clutching her laptop in her hands. “Wait, _what?”_

“What?” Allie repeats, confused.

“Say that again –you can track Lance’s magic? I thought you said you’d try to do it with his pendant.”

“I gave up on the pendant. I could track him with his magic alone, before, but now…” Allie trails off, lips twisting. “I’ve been trying, but his magic has changed since he came to space. I have not been exposed enough to it to get a good enough feel of it to use and track back to him.”

_Holy shit. Please –_

“Coran,” she calls, startling the Altean from staring emptily at his console. He looks to her, and Pidge knows that far-off look in his eyes isn’t good, but she can’t focus on that right now. The seed of something, an idea, is in her mind, curled up in a dark corner she needs to shine a light on. “Coran, is it possible that Lance’s ice powers are literally Blue’s quintessence infused with his own magic? Not just her influence, but actual pieces of her quintessence in his magic?”

He nods jerkily. “Yes –yes, it’s more than likely that that’s the case. Being the Blue Paladin makes him the guardian of water as Blue’s quintessence is that of water, and considering his sensitivity to quintessence due to his magic, it’s possible that the two aspects melding together has resulted in his newly developed power.”

Pidge spins back round to face Allie. “Is that why you can’t track him with magic? Because you know what Blue’s quintessence is like, you know what Lance’s magic is like, but it’s separate, so you can’t figure what both are like _together?”_

Allie nods, her eyebrows wrinkled together as she looks down at Pidge, trying to figure out what Pidge is thinking, why she’s asking what she is. “Yes, that’s it. There’s traces of his magic on some of you, kind of like –like pollen, from flowers, but it’s too little.”

Pidge turns around and smacks Hunk’s arm, not hard enough to hurt, but enough to yank his mind away from replaying what they’ve just seen and bring his attention to her. “Can you build something to track not Lance’s armour and helmet, but _Blue’s_ quintessence?”

Hunk blinks at her with watery eyes. “I mean, yeah, I can overwrite the basic mechanism of the tracking device and tweak it to change what it looks for, and Blue would have to give me a base sample of her quintessence so I could –” he gapes at her, and she grins back at him triumphantly. “Holy crap, Pidge, that’s it!”

“Wait,” Shiro brings the two out of their bubble with a confused look on his face. “What’s ‘it’?”

“Okay, so, Jesus I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before.” Pidge starts, hurriedly rushing through her explanation. “Allie’s been trying to track Lance’s magic while Hunk has been trying to locate his armour and helmet and I’ve been on the data. But what if we’re going about it all wrong? Blue’s quintessence is literally the only one of its kind, that’s the whole point of Lance being her Paladin, they’re quintessence is similar. But never mind that –if Lance’s magic has enough of her quintessence in it, we could follow it right to where he is.”

Allura nods, her eyes alight with hope. “Yes, that –that just might be what we need to find him! There is surely enough of her quintessence merged with his magic if he could develop a totally new ability because of it. Hunk, how quickly can you recalibrate the tracking device to look for the Blue Lion’s quintessence instead?”

“Uh,” he scratches his head. “Twenty to thirty minutes? Maybe an hour, because quintessence is different from electrical charges and it’ll take a little time to match the energy waves of her quintessence to what the device is capable of handling it, but –but I can do it. I can definitely do it.”

Shiro nods, he and Allura exchanging a look the way they always do when a plan is formulating. Pidge glances at Allie. The utter despair in Allie’s eyes has lessened, a bit, overshadowed by hesitant hope as she listens to the team doing what they do best.

“Okay,” Allura says. “Hunk, you and I will head down to the Blue Lion’s hangar and get the quintessence you need. Pidge, Coran will help you continue decrypting the Galra’s transmissions and get the location of that ship.”

“Keith,” Shiro calls, and Keith turns to him, that strange look still in his eye, but there’s more clarity to the hardened edges of him as he looks at Shiro. “Red’s the fastest Lion, so when we get the coordinates for the ship –”

“I’m going with him.” Allie says.

“Allie, that’s not –” Allura starts.

“You know I can fight,” Allie cuts her off, her gaze hardened to flint. “And I have an idea of what it takes to infiltrate a Galra ship. I need to be there –I need to be there to help Lance. Please, just –just let me do this.”

After a moment of silent deliberation, and long look with heavy meaning between Shiro and Allura, the Princess finally, slowly, nods. She doesn’t like the idea of it, clearly, but they all know they’ll need all the help they can get to bring Lance home from that hell-hole. Especially now that they know that the voices in Lance’s head aren’t just in his head but, somehow, real enough to take over his body and black him out so that he doesn’t remember any of it.

Really. They all know none of them are equipped to handle something like that, when they’ve only just learned of it.

Shiro continues. “All right. Keith, you and Allie will sneak in and get Lance while the rest of us distract the Commander and fighters. For now, I’ll help Allie find armour she can wear for the mission.” Shiro glances between Allie and Keith. “Do you both understand?”

Slowly, as if he’s moving through water, Keith nods. He doesn’t say anything, but his jaw clenches, and Pidge knows he’s all the way in. Allie’s hands tighten to fists at her side as gold sparks around her fingers, and Pidge quickly scoots back into her chair and continues working, Coran crossing the room to join her with his own tablet.

Pidge still has no idea how magic works. There certainly hasn’t been any time to interrogate Allie about it, and before Lance…before Lance was taken, he’d spent a lot of time recuperating from breaking his Seal. Pidge doesn’t know how magic works, why Lance’s magic is invisible while Allie’s is golden, but she’s certainly not willing to stand so close to Allie when she seems barely able to control her magic after everything that’s just happened. Pidge doesn’t want to risk Allie accidentally frying her laptop at so crucial a time.

“Thank you,” Allie tells him, looking at all of them one by one.

Pidge waves a hand dismissively, barely listening anymore. “Thank us when we get our brother back.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Hermanito, estás bien?” = little brother, are you okay?  
> Mijo = son  
> “Tienes que hacerlo, ¿dónde Alex no podía.” = You have to make it where Alex could not.  
> Pase lo que pase, Lance, debes vivir.” = No matter what, Lance, you must live.
> 
> Now you know (kinda) what happens when the voices take over. What happens? Shit. Major shit happens. The first draft of this chapter actually had this dark Lance killing Edmynun, but…that’s a bit hardcore, even for me.
> 
> (says the pretend-writer who has had a main character rip out a person’s spine just like that, without blinking an eye) (I can get hardcore when I want to but Lance has enough to deal with without the added weight of having killed that alien I made up ok I do have limits)
> 
> I’m so curious/terrified about what you guys think of this chapter! Did it live up to your expectations? What did you think about Ratass –sorry, Radnak –and what he did to Lance? What about the memories the Druid forced out? Right along those mysterious scary ones, I thought it would be nice(heartbreaking) to include that scene with Lance’s mother and father, way back from “nobody has to know (nobody but me)”. Did you like? >.<
> 
> I kind of kept whispering to myself “what the fuck what the fuck” when I legitimately cried when writing that part where Allie was begging the team to save Lance because she thought they’d leave him behind now that they know Lance has kept such huge secrets from them. It takes a lot for me to cry when writing the way I did in that scene, and last time that happened, I FREAKING KILLED SOMEONE.
> 
> As always, any comment is always welcome! I always reply, so don’t think I’ll leave anyone hanging!
> 
> [Wattpad](https://www.wattpad.com/user/azurehyn) || [Tumblr](https://www.azurehyn.tumblr.com)
> 
> p.s., do you guys actually like/want to read these end notes from me? If not I can totally stop, I just get really into it because it’s so fun for me and not something you can do on Wattpad, so of course I take full advantage of it. But if you don’t like, no problem, I’ll tone it down.
> 
> *returns to deceased state of existence after Season 5 trailer dropped*


	9. the world has got you (alone in silence)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith and Allie share a murderous moment, then go back to low-key hating each other. Pidge’s plan to find Lance works, but…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t think anyone appreciates the sheer level of skill it takes to use a laptop when you have not one, but TWO cats trying to hog the keyboard as a bed. And one of those cats happens to be fat doll-like demon while the other is a lanky octopus. Goddamn.
> 
> I’ll be on a full social media blackout from March 1st to March 11th, because SEASON 5’S COMING OUT ON 2nd but I have the SAT to do on 10th and I know if I let myself watch season 5 as soon as it’s out my life will be wholly consumed by Voltron because I’m planning to rewatch the entire thing in one go plus s5, and I can’t really afford that, and I do not want to be accidentally spoiled. So.
> 
> *huddles in a corner and sobs*
> 
> This chapter is dedicated to: [ Stuck_In_Tartarus ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Stuck_in_Tartarus/pseuds/Stuck_in_Tartarus), darkpurpledesire, [ BATCATT ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/BATCATT/pseuds/BATCATT) [ AnimeBanshee ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/AnimeBanshee/pseuds/AnimeBanshee) [ freshhell ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/freshhell/pseuds/freshhell%20) [ Author_In_Silver_Ink ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Author_In_Silver_Ink/pseuds/Author_In_Silver_Ink%0A) and [ GonerLoner ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/GonerLoner/pseuds/GonerLoner) for being such fantastic readers and coming back for each update! I know these are just a few of you but my memory is absolute shit and I couldn’t remember everyone. But if you think I haven’t noticed you, well, here! *hurls 16k of pain at you and runs back to that corner to cry*
> 
> "the world has got you (alone in silence)" - Your World Will Fail, Les Friction
> 
> ^^that’s the song of the chapter title, but I’d recommend listening to [Aether](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOfqtucJ3kI) by Xtortion Audio for this chapter. :)
> 
> TW: a lot a lot of injury, blood, death (no MCD dont worre i cant handle that), stabbing.
> 
> p.s., I give up. Just expect long chapters from me. I can’t write short chapters.

_time becomes an abstract concept to lance, slipping through his desperately grasping fingers like the grains of sand that he tries to hold on to, but never quite manages to. it’s something he vaguely knows is there, but can’t imagine what it is, what it’s supposed to do, why he’s supposed to care about it._

_if he’s even supposed to care. he doesn’t know if he should. he doesn’t know why it matters._

_he blacks out a lot. this he knows. sometimes he sees purple lights flashing in front of his eyes. sometimes he feels an overwhelming tirade of pain hit him from all sides, searing through his body, turning his bones to crumbling ash and tearing his muscles apart until they’re stretched thin and bleeding, his insides melting and oozing out of his pores. he screams so loud his ears ring, so hard his head pounds with the force of it, yet none of it helps. nothing stops the pain from beating into him in droves._

_but then the cacophony of voices comes flooding in, sweeping through his mind and shoving him so far back, so deep into himself, that he forgets what feeling is, and simply floats in the emptiness of something he doesn’t understand, or care to. it’s an odd comfort, when he reaches that nothingness. it’s sort of like he’s sleeping in a comfortable position, but it’s been too long, and he needs to move, to shift, because there’s a little discomfort now, a little soreness, but he’s trapped in blank dreams and no matter how hard he tries, he can’t make himself move._

_there is a reason he should try to move. this he knows. there’s something niggling at him, something that he’s supposed to know, to think about. but he can’t figure it out. in the thick haze that clouds him, and then screaming through the pain that snaps him out of the fog only for the voices to send him careening back into the mist, nothing seems to matter._

_sometimes, when he floats, he thinks,_ there’s someone i care about.

_this matters. he knows._

_sometimes, when he floats, he thinks,_ there’s people i care about.

_this matters. he knows._

_sometimes, when he floats, he wonders if they even care._

_does he matter? he doesn’t know._

↭§↭

Keith feels every second of the minutes that tick by as he watches Pidge and Coran confer and work on the data Pidge lifted from the video transmissions little over an hour ago.

He’s in a rare state where his body just, quite simply, does not want to move. A nervous tension wires his muscles, has his foot twitching every few seconds in small and irregular circles, but he keeps utterly still otherwise. He sits cross-legged, lower back pressed against the wall, fingers laced together and elbows resting on his knees as he watches the two work. Normally, when he’s this on edge, he would be training, trying desperately to get rid of the pent-up energy that vibrates in his bones. If he wasn’t taking his frustrations on the gladiators, he’d spar with Shiro, who would (in vain, eighty percent of the time) try to get Keith to talk about his ‘feelings’ and why he was so angry or irritated to begin with.

(The one time he sparred with Allura was exactly that –one time. Like Keith, she doesn’t talk much while training with few holds barred. Unlike Keith, she is Altean, and so much stronger than the average human. His part-Galra genes, and the strength he’s noticed has started increasing lately, don’t hold a candle next to Allura. Shiro has had his ass handed to him multiple times trying to take her on.)

But now is different. Now, Keith has barely moved from this spot since everyone scattered to do their jobs. He just sits. He watches Pidge and Coran hurl techno-babble at each other faster than a speeding bullet as they work to find Lance’s location, talking to Hunk over the intercoms to find out what his and Allura’s progress is going with the Blue Lion.

He sits, watches, and waits for his turn to do his part. He’s dressed in his armour, bayard at his hip in the compartment built for it, and all he can do now is wait. He’s afraid that if he tries to move, he’ll break into a million pieces, each jagged edge dripping with the memory of what he saw.

Lance, in an arena, moving in a way totally unlike anything Keith has ever seen from Lance during any of Allura and Shiro’s hellish training sessions.

His blue eyes stuttering like bad static on TV into crimson disks that glowed like the devil’s.

Every iron barb dipped in acidic poison as the Narganiann shapeshifter used Lance’s insecurities and fear against him, to weaken him, only for Lance to completely flip and nearly slit their throat to teach them a lesson for messing with the wrong person, _after_ pinning the alien in place with two well-aimed, immobilizing arrows.

Lance shooting the dwarf Galra right through the foot while under the floating podium, then destroying the camera with pinpoint accuracy despite its distance.

Lance’s screams of pain still echo in Keith’s head, replaying endlessly as he watches the grotesque film of Lance getting whipped, over and over, again and again, and still refusing to divulge any information about Voltron, through all of it.

Then there are his memories.

Memories where Allie killed some kind of shadowy creature that was strangling Lance, when they were just _kids._ Memories of Lance sparring with some nine-hundred-year-old (what the fuck is with that though) redheaded Fergus guy, somewhere that was definitely not Cuba or America, talking about some kind of organization called the Order.

Memories of Lance covered in the blood of a man who looked like Lance’s older brother, wearing Lance’s jacket, with a _Ladenian_ standing over him. A Ladenian who Lance had been terrified of. Lance’s parents telling him to go to the Garrison and live out his dream of being a fighter pilot. Lance protecting the Castle from the ion canon. Lance with red eyes and hands in a steel grip around Allie’s neck.

Keith doesn’t know how to process any of it. So he doesn’t.

He leaves the fragmented pieces of the puzzle to float aimlessly in his head. He doesn’t try to fit them together to see what picture forms from the disjointed, chaotic mess. Even despite the blood rushing too loud in his veins, through his head, the hard thump of his heart speaking to the insistent need to jump into action, he feels like a doll, a stringless puppet waiting for someone to notice it and give it a job to do.

He wonders if he’s in some sort of state of delayed shock or something.

He decides he doesn’t care.

He barely blinks when Allie sits next to him, a foot away, but still too close for Keith to pretend she just sat there because it’s convenient. She doesn’t say anything. She just sits beside him and wordlessly joins him in observing Pidge, Coran, and now Shiro. Her staring is more intent, though, as if she could will them into getting Lance’s location that much faster if she just _stares harder._

He wonders if he should tell her he already tried that, and it didn’t work. It only had Pidge irritably snapping at him to stop staring like a perverted, paedophilic stalker on crack.

(Pidge’s insults can border on literary comebacks fuelled with almost tangible flames when she’s especially annoyed at everything in existence and essentially driving herself to exhaustion through pure force of will. Treat wounds with care.)

Keith finally breaks their shared silence after five minutes tick by.

“Did you get armour?”

He sees her nod from his periphery. “Lance and I are the same height, but there are no extra sets of the Paladin armour.” That’s something Keith’s always been meaning to ask Coran about, but never actually got around to doing. “I’m borrowing Allura’s battlesuit since, apparently, Alteans can shapeshift, and so can their clothes.”

That explains why Allura’s clothes didn’t tear when she grew seven feet tall and turned purple.

A few more minutes tick by.

Then, “Demons.”

He looks at her, one eyebrow lifted. “What?”

“The thing you saw me kill in Lance’s memory, when we were kids. It was a demon.”

Oh.

So those are real.

Huh.

“The world –Earth –is infested with demons. Witches kill them, those trained for it. Lance is a strong Witch,” she breathes shakily. “And that demon sensed his power. It tried to kill Lance. I killed it first.”

He just gives her a blank look. If she expects him to be surprised at the lengths she’s clearly willing to go to protect Lance, she’s got another thing coming. “Why are you telling me this?”

She glances at him before returning to fixedly staring at the three still hurriedly working. As she does, Keith takes in her profile; her hair is yanked back into a single thick braid that rests against her curved spine, going down to her waist. Golden beads with tiny decorations on them are twined through the smaller plaits flashing under the lights of the bridge. She’s wearing black leggings coupled with a black, long-sleeved turtleneck, the hilts of two daggers protruding from the tops of her boots. At her side she’s laid down her bow and quiver full of arrows. Keith isn’t sure it’s just a play of the light that makes the wood of her bow gleam.

“Before I was pulled into space,” she continues quietly. “I thought that the worst things in creation were demons. I didn’t –don’t –believe in gods, or the God, so I just blamed their existence and the things they do on some formless entity. Then I learned of the Galra, and that they follow the orders of one man. I saw what they are capable of doing in Zarkon’s name, and what they are willing to do, when they hurt Lance.” She looks at him again, unbreakable steel laced in ice blue. “I am going to kill Radnak. Will you try to stop me?”

Keith turns away from her, eyes drifting over to Shiro, intently listening to something Coran is explaining to him by wildly gesticulating at his tablet.

“Funny,” he comments blandly. “I was going to do the same thing.”

He feels Allie’s eyes on him for a few more moments before she looks away as well. “Shiro does not seem like he would approve of that.”

“Self-defence.” He answers brusquely. He pulls out his luxite blade and looks down at it, tilting it this way and that to catch the light in different ways, watching the dark blade flash. “Anything I do to Radnak will be self-defence.”

She shrugs. “At least I don’t have to answer to him.”

He is under no illusions about that. She may be helping them to get Lance back, but she isn’t a part of the team.

“What about Lance?”

She glances at him sharply. “What about him?”

He doesn’t look at her as he says, “A whole year in this war, and Lance has done everything he can to avoid killing anyone, even Galra, when he can.” That kind of integrity isn’t something he completely understands beyond it being a quiet kind of honour that Lance never, ever boasts about. “What do you think he’ll say if it’s you who kills Radnak for him?”

Allie doesn’t answer immediately, but when she does, it’s with a question. “What do you think he’ll say if it’s you who kills Radnak?”

Good question.

“He doesn’t get a say in it.” Keith mutters. “Not after what he pulled on Ladene. Not until he answers for that.”

Allie uncrosses her legs and pulls them up to her chest as she leans on the wall, wrapping her arms around her knees. “Lance doesn’t like me killing. Even if it’s demons, he’s never liked me taking a life, no matter how warped and corrupted it is.” She rests her chin on her arm. “He doesn’t get a say in what I do until he explains to me why he managed to get out of our war, only to be caught up in another.”

He doesn’t comment on her mentioning ‘our war’ for the second time today. “We didn’t ask for this.”

“He could have left.”

“We’re fighting to save more lives and planets than you can think of.” Keith’s eyes harden to flint. He has to grip his blade’s handle hard enough to leave imprints on his palm to keep himself from raising his voice. “Do _you_ get a say in that, when you haven’t actually seen, with your own eyes, what Zarkon does to entire worlds he conquers, peoples he enslaves? Lance has seen it first-hand, all of us have, and we stayed so that this war never touches Earth. Do you think _you_ get a say in what he’s chosen to do?”

She purses her lips. Keith gets the feeling that even when she knows she’s in the wrong, she won’t admit it. There’s too much pride in the stubborn set of her jaw. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, right,” he snipes. “The Beast you’re so afraid of. The war you say you’re fighting back on Earth.” She glares at him for that, but he doesn’t back down, even though he lets some of the bite ease away. Maybe that was a low blow. He wouldn’t know –she isn’t _saying_ anything about it. “I know Lance has been through a lot, more than he’s ever let on to any of us, but he’s still here. He’s still here through all of it, and there’s a reason for that. He knows it’s the right thing to do, whether you like it or not.”

Keith stands up at that, the low-simmering fire in his veins finally reaching a heat that he can’t simply sit on any longer. He doesn’t look back as he stalks forward, headed for the doors, intending to go work of some steam in the training room until something happens. The novel rarity that is Keith sitting still for longer than ten seconds unless unconscious has faded, and now the energy burning in his body demands attention, demands to be spent.

The doors burst open before he can reach it. Allura runs in, the white bun of her hair knocked wildly askew, cheeks flushed with excitement, shortly followed by a beaming Hunk clutching the device he’s been struggling with for the last nine days. There’s a faint shimmer of blue light around it, alongside the small glass container stuck on the top of it that glows with little sparkles of light inside it.

 _This better be good news,_ he thinks as he quickly turns and follows behind Hunk to where everyone’s gathered.

“We got it!” Hunk exclaims excitedly.

Pidge looks up from her laptop, the frustrated scowl on her bushy brow smoothing out to a look of pure relief. “Are you serious? Please tell me you’re being serious. I need some serious good news right now. Altean coffee doesn’t actually have enough caffeine.”

Allura nods, clasping her hands and her eyes shining as she follows Hunk to stand between Shiro and Coran as Hunk reaches Pidge. Keith has quickly backtracked so that he stands on Shiro’s other side, Allie standing tense next to him.

“It took us a while to draw the raw quintessence out of the Blue Lion,” Allura says, and he can see it, in the tired bags nestled under her eyes. “But we finally got it.”

“Yeah,” Hunk picks up after her. He lifts up the device. “Blue didn’t want to at first, I think the Lions are probably just like, hardwired to not randomly give out spurts of their quintessence, but once she realized it was to find Lance, we worked it out.”

“That is probably true.” Coran muses. “The Lions have inbuilt defence mechanisms that prevents them from being boarded by anyone not expressly permitted to by either the Lion or their Paladin, as well as keeps any part of their body or spirit from being extracted.”

Pidge makes grabby hands for the device, and Hunk gently hands it over to her. “Be careful with it –Blue didn’t look like she’d be giving up any more.”

“Uh-huh,” Pidge nods distractedly, tapping a button on the side and sticking a wire to it before connecting it to her laptop.

“Is that all you need to find Lance?” asks Shiro, hesitant anticipation colouring every word.

“Should be,” Pidge flicks a finger across the device’s screen, relaying the Altean text on the device to her laptop. “I just need to make sure it’s working properly, then I’ll set it to run and track Blue’s quintessence through all of the charted universe. Thank god Coran updated the charts instead of leaving ’em as ten-thousand year outdated maps.”

“I’m not a god?” Coran sounds so confused. Lance would probably laugh at that, make some stupid joke.

Keith shakes his head. There’s no ‘would probably’ about it. They’re going to get him back, no matter what. And after Keith chews him out for being so _stupid_ and self-sacrificing, he’ll make sure Lance gets back to normal –at least, as close to it as he can manage.

Keith leans over Pidge’s shoulder to get a closer look, his pulse beating like the hooves of a horse on sun-baked ground in anticipation. Though he can’t make heads or tails of any of it, he prays it’s a good sign that he recognizes an English word here and there, and that the program that springs to life on her laptop looks like a minimized, digitalized version of the holographic map in the star-map room. It’s depressingly grey, but Keith tries to keep his spirits up by the fact that Pidge hasn’t switched the device on yet.

Pidge types out a few lines of code from memory, something that always befuddles Keith because really, how the hell does she remember all that. Her tablet lights up beside her a second later and she snatches it up, tapping at the screen for a moment before she drags her finger upwards across the screen and opens up a holographic star-map.

Keith steps back to take it in its entirety, the reds of urgent distress signals (thank god there’s only a one, and that one is fading, showing it’s been deactivated already), orange dots for those signals that have been active before they became Paladins and after the fall of Altea (there’s a hell of a lot more of those) and purple dots that track the movements of Galra ships that Pidge has managed to hook an encrypted line on so that they at least vaguely know which galaxies are safe to go to, and which ones to avoid (it’s not a perfect system considering it’s difficult to get Pidge’s virtual tracking device on those ships without them realizing, but it’s better than nothing). The star-map spreads out across the whole bridge, shimmering through everyone’s bodies cutting through it, but Keith knows that this is still only a tiny fraction of the universe they’re fighting to save.

He glances at Allie to see her staring at the map in awestruck silence, the blue of her eyes catching the silver lights of the holographic stars and making them look like she’d trapped those stars in her eyes. She gapes at the sight, looking from one swirling star system to another, looking at the reds and oranges and purples dotting the entire map. When her eyes fall on him, she shuts her mouth and tries to school her expression to one of neutrality, but it’s too late. He caught her.

He thinks it’ll take more than looking at a star-map to make her realize just how big their fight against Zarkon is, just how many people and planets are depending on them to be saved after ten thousand years’ enslavement by the Galra empire.

“Okay,” Pidge says, setting her laptop down on her chair and standing in front of it, one hand clutching the modified tracking device like a literal lifeline. “I’m going to activate it. Blue’s quintessence in here will send out a pulse we won’t physically see, but if this works, her quintessence should light up a blue dot somewhere on this map that should be where Lance is.”

No one asks what will happen if no blue appears on the map. This is the best they’ve come up with in days, and after seeing what is happening to Lance, right as they speak probably, no one wants to entertain the thought of having to waste more time trying to think of something else to save him. If that happens, Keith will lose his mind. Simple as that.

Shiro nods at Pidge, gently encouraging. “Go ahead, Pidge.”

She bites her lip. Her thumb hovers over a small button on the device, then presses down on it.

Keith drags his eyes away from the worryingly plain device, the way it doesn’t react at all. He looks out at the star-map that continues to swirl lazily around them, all silver and red and purple and orange, but no blue comes in. Keith looks back at Pidge to see her staring intently not at the map, but at the copy of it on her laptop’s screen. He follows her gaze to it, but it’s the same story with that. No blue appears. The device in Pidge’s hand, the swirling, glowing blue attached to the top of it, remains just the way it was before Pidge pressed the button.

_Beep._

It’s like a crack of thunder snaps through the room, echoing into the strained silence. For a second, no one moves. Shiro looks at Allura, Coran looks at Hunk, Pidge looks at Keith, Allie stares out at the map, so perfectly still that she could be carved from marble, barely breathing.

_Beep._

Slowly, like his muscles will tear if he moves any quicker, Keith looks away from Pidge’s huge eyes behind the lenses of her glasses. He looks away, to the holographic star-map, terrified of the hope fluttering in his chest like a bird trapped in a cage of bone, because that same hope has led to such crushing disappointment so many times in his life that he’s had to learn how to kill that hope, over and over, stabbing it again and again until it bleeds all over him but doesn’t have a beating heart anymore. So that it doesn’t have any power over him anymore.

He doesn’t want to do that again. He wants that hope to mean something, now, when it means something. He almost closes his eyes when they snap to and fro over the star-map, searching for the source of the beeping that continuously sounds at every few seconds. When he finds it, he almost stops breathing.

Blue.

↭§↭

_sometimes he’ll see things in the fog. hear things, too._

_he doesn’t know if they’re really there or not._

_he sees something that he thinks is blue. its shape is constantly changing, never staying in one form long enough for him to vaguely grasp at its meaning before it shifts into something else. its colour is blue, but that’s a poor thing to say. it is blue, but so much, so many, melting and sparkling and swimming in ways he never dreamed possible._

_other things he thinks are colours bleed into the empty lands he wanders. there’s a warm yellow that pulses with a steady light, never wavering. it comforts him, when he sees it. it comes after the blue, as if the blue is nudging it forward, to remind him of…something. the yellow dulls to muted orange when the blue wanders from it, and just as he’s about to ask it to go back to the yellow, it does, and the orange brightens again to sunshine._

_the blue comes back, but it’s gone just as fast, flitting away, teasing him, telling him without words,_ come to me, come, be here with me, remember. _he doesn’t know how he knows what it says, what it wants._

_green flows in after the blue fades. green like the stalks of flowers, like grass. green like the bright light that reflects of something round, clear, perched on what might be a nose wrinkled in laughter._

come back, _blue says, and it shifts, again, into a black so deep it’s hard not to see it whiten out, the edges a vivid violet with twisted bits of grey, a hard armour shielding a strong and delicate silver core._

be here with me, remember, _blue whispers again, rustling against his mind as everything shatters around him like mirrors falling on the ground. that’s when the voices come through –voices that aren’t in him, voices that aren’t_ them, _voices that don’t comfort him and remind him of good things he doesn’t remember._

_he hears one asking him questions. flames touch his feet, but no matter how he screams and begs, the fire doesn’t abate. every time the pain leaves and then surges again, that voice asks him a question, but he’s too out of it to answer. when he does, the pain worsens, until he drifts back to that place where it’s nothing and then it’s nothing with something that reminds him of something before the nothing flows back in._

↭§↭

The team has, quite possibly, never moved as fast as they do when the stupor of the fact that Pidge’s idea actually worked (even Pidge is shell-shocked for fifteen seconds before she springs into action like a wild cat) wears off.

As soon as Coran identifies the pulsing blue spot to be coasting through a trilateral star system with no identifiable life on the four giant gas planets orbiting the small star, everyone’s moving. Allura confirms with the long-range scanners that a cruiser-size ship is slowly drifting through the triple-sun conglomerate system, just a few galaxies away, but they’ll need to get closer, much closer, to be sure of what kind of force they’ll meet when they attack.

Shiro walks them through a more detailed, thought-out plan than the one he and Allura roughly came up with after Pidge told them her idea. Allura begins opening up a wormhole to get them far enough from the Galra ship to avoid immediate detection, but still close enough that they can keep an eye on the ship for as long as needed before they move on to the first step of the plan.

With the strong likelihood that there will be prisoners they’ll need to set free as well, a contingency plan is made so that if it’s necessary, Pidge and Shiro will back Hunk up as he goes to get the prisoners in his Lion, Keith and Allie (hopefully with Lance in tow) shepherding them to the Yellow Lion. The Castle will have to interfere in the fight to keep the Galra from noticing Hunk long enough to get everyone out, something they’re all hoping it won’t come to. No one wants to risk Allura having to keep the wormhole open _and_ steer the Castle well enough to keep from being blown to bits, even with Pidge and Shiro protecting it.

(No one, absolutely _no one,_ wants a repeat of the wormhole incident.)

From the corner of his eye, Keith catches the Allie’s frustration in her fingers drumming incessantly on the back of Hunk’s chair as they make plans to probably have to get the prisoners out along with Lance, but she makes no comment beyond agreeing to help where she can. Keith knows she won’t object to it; he knows that he knows next to nothing about Witches and their world, but if she really is caught up in her own war, she understands why they have to free the prisoners as well.

Keith may be endlessly infuriated at the Narganiann for not trying to not fight with Lance in the arena, but he’s still (relatively) level-headed enough to remember that Edmynun was fighting for his family. Who knows how long they’d had to be in the arena just to keep their family safe.

(That doesn’t mean Keith doesn’t want to at least punch Edmynun for using Lance’s insecurities against him, for donning _their_ faces and saying such horrible things to Lance, even if the words were pulled from Lance’s own mind. He’s not quite that level-headed, and entirely uninterested in becoming so.)

Hunk and Pidge run a hasty maintenance on the Lions to make sure they’re all working to top shape, Pidge ensuring that the Green Lion’s cloaking device will work when she sneaks up to the Galra ship and engages first, backed up by Shiro and Hunk. Allie and Keith run over their part of the plan, setting aside their differences in light of the fact that they both want to –need to –bring Lance home. Nothing else matters more than that now.

“Paladins, Allie,” Coran calls out to them. “The wormhole will be ready in three dobashes.”

Allura looks at them from her place with her hands on the lit controls. Their light makes the lilac-turquoise of her eyes glow eerily. “Get to your Lions. Allie, you’re with Keith.”

“Got it.” She answers smoothly.

Shiro smiles thinly at her easy acquiescence. “Once we’re through the wormhole, begin the mission immediately. Keith, you and Allie get Lance out of that ship as quickly as possible, and if there are prisoners there, fall back on the contingency plan and get them loaded in the Yellow Lion as quickly as possible.”

“I’ll hold the wormhole open for as long as I can to get us out of here,” Allura adds. “But I won’t be able to hold it for longer than a varga, at most.”

“That’s all we’ll need.” Keith says, glancing at Allie, who gives him a determined look. For some reason, Keith feels like she’s silently saying, _It’ll be faster than that if I have anything to say about it._

He agrees.

“Team,” Shiro looks at all of them with purpose, a faint smile of encouragement on his lips that opposes the swirl of worry and hope and fear in the storms of his grey eyes. “Our top priority is getting Lance back. I know you want to do more, to pay back the Galra for what they’ve done,” Keith is quite sure he’s not imagining it when Shiro gives both him and Allie a pointed look. “But that can be dealt with later. This isn’t a revenge mission, it’s a rescue mission. We don’t know what state Lance will be in when we get to him, and he’ll undoubtedly need immediate medical attention. Find him, and bring him home. That’s the first step. The rest comes later. Understand?”

They all nod, Hunk and Pidge giving out a chorus of ‘yes’ and ‘yep’, then they all turn heel and sprint out of the bridge, Allura and Coran calling out their good lucks to them as they leave. Allie keeps up good pace with Keith, but instead of going to his zipline like he’d usually do, he heads straight for Red’s hangar instead, unsure if the zipline will work for Allie, or if she can use it (he’s sure she can, but doesn’t want to waste precious minutes finding out).

Fortunately, it doesn’t take Keith long to get Red to open up for the two of them. He feels her discontent and irritation at having to let in someone that’s not her Paladin, but once he assures her it’s only so they can get to Lance and bring him home, bring home her sister’s cub, she opens her maw and the two clamber in. Keith makes a beeline for the pilot seat while Allie comes to stand over his shoulder, able to see what he does, but not in his way.

 _Hey,_ he calls. _You gonna give her a seat or what?_

Red merely grumbles irritably. She may have let Allie in –doesn’t mean she’s going to give her the royal treatment. Keith’s lips tick up a little in a faint smile at that, at how childishly mulish his Lion can be.

“You…you are a good pilot,” Allie says quietly. It doesn’t sound like a statement, but it’s not really a question either. It’s sort of somewhere in between, like she’s confirming something she knows, but isn’t quite sure of at the same time.

Keith glances at her, briefly wondering where the hell she stuffed all her hair in Allura’s helmet. He doesn’t answer as his screens flicker to life, the other’s faces looking back at him in steel determination.

“Allura’s opening the wormhole now,” Shiro tells them, glancing briefly at Allie standing over Keith’s shoulder. “Once we’re through, Hunk, Pidge and I will engage with the Galra and distract them while Keith and Allie get onto the ship. You two will have to tell us about any prisoners. Everyone clear on what they’re doing?”

Their agreement rings out, and everyone settles down in preparation for the wormhole jump, Allie gripping the back of Keith’s chair tight.

Here, in Red, he doesn’t feel the sharp tug in his gut of the Castle wormholing through space the way he does when on the bridge. His stomach doesn’t sink through the floor and rise back up covered in acidic bile that coats the back of his throat as one second he tries to get used to this vague floating feeling, and the next his feet are on solid ground and there are stars twinkling ahead of him in patterns he doesn’t recognize, again. Once the Castle is through the wormhole, Allura tells them through the comms that it’s time.

Keith immediately urges Red forward once her hangar doors slide open, and he shoots out into the open vacuum of space, and overwhelming sense of relief, like taking in the first breath of a clean, fresh breeze that brushes across his face, after being stuck with stale air for so long. He closes his eyes for a second, revelling in the immense sense of freedom and possibility that always comes when he’s here, with Red, out in the open.

He opens his eyes again when the other’s voices filter in, their faces on flickering to life in front of him.

“That battlecruiser doesn’t look big enough to have an arena in it.” Hunk comments suspiciously.

Keith pulls up a map on one screen, Red sending out a scan that quickly returns with a single beeping red dot sitting just beyond a ring of asteroid belts, in between two belts that orbit around one of the planets in the system. He taps at a keyboard he pulls out of the dashboard, zooming in on the signal until he sees a typical Galra cruiser, a little bulkier than usual, but not by much. It’s not quite aimlessly floating inside the asteroid belt, but not exactly in a hurry, either. He glances back, Red’s head swinging with movement, to see that the Castle is safely tucked away behind a moon, the gravitational force doing just enough to scramble the Castle’s signal from the cruiser’s detection.

“Is that it?” Allie asks.

He nods shortly. “Probably.”

The thing is, Galra cruisers aren’t big enough to hold an arena the size of the one Lance had fought in. This one certainly isn’t. Is it possible it’s not even the right ship?

 _Please let this be the one,_ he thinks, pleading. _Please tell me we’ve got the right one._

“Based on the schematics I’ve managed to pull up since we’re so close to the ship,” Pidge adds, and Keith doesn’t even bother asking how the fuck she did that in less than five minutes. “It definitely does not have an arena in it, but I don’t know, maybe it’s just one part of the fleet of the ship there where the arena actually is?”

“Didn’t Radnak say that he was supposed to take Lance to Zarkon’s Central Command?” Keith frowns. “A ship big enough to hold an arena wouldn’t be able to travel that fast, even in hyperspace.”

Shiro nods, a frown twisting at his lips. “They probably moved him to this one so they’d get to Central Command faster.”

Allie’s eyes don’t move from the image of the cruiser as she asks, “Where is this Central Command?”

“Pretty much on the other side of the universe,” Coran speaks up, face appearing on a screen above the dashboard, Allura standing behind him as she concentrates on keeping the wormhole open and out of sight. “Even with a battlecruiser that size, it’ll take more than a few quintents to reach Central Command.”

Allie blinks owlishly at him before looking at Keith. “The hell is a quintent?”

“Day,” he answers shortly.

“Alteans have different a different set of measurements they use to scale time.” Pidge pipes up. “Tick’s a second, dobash is a minutes, varga’s an hour, quintent a day, phoebe a year, so on so forth. Okay, hold on,” she tells them. “Let me just do a quick scan to see if there’re prisoners.”

Keith frowns. “You can tell? From here?”

“Mostly deducing from logic,” she answers. “If there are heat signatures that are scattered, or at least moving along in an organized manner, then that’s the Galra soldiers patrolling the ship. A cluster of heat signatures towards the front of the battlecruiser means that’s the bridge and where most of the active duty personnel will be, like Radnak and maybe even that Druid. Prisoners will be individual heat signatures in a consistent line or curve, or maybe grouped in twos and threes.”

“Hurry, Pidge,” Shiro urges. “We don’t know what’s happening to Lance right now. There’s a Druid on board, and we can’t be sure they haven’t taken special…interest in Lance because of his magic.”

Keith feels his stomach plummet. He didn’t think of that. The Druids took Shiro’s arm and experimented on him simply because he was a type of alien they hadn’t come across before. If they have a ‘special interest’ in Lance because of his magic, or just because of being human…he’s making himself sick just vaguely thinking about what they could have done, _be_ doing, to Lance.

Allie shifts her attention back to the battlecruiser, watching it with such intensity that Keith feels something in his gut coil tight at how familiar it is to see those ice blue eyes turning serious, yet so jarring to see those eyes in another face.

The anticipation buzzing in Keith’s veins like some kind of high-end energy drink is, he thinks, adrenaline. He’s had this same rush dozens of times, for every single battle he’s been in when fighting, be it with Red in space, or on some planet, or even when he went through the Blade of Marmora trials. But there’s something distinctly different about it too.

Keith knows he has anger issues, and that he takes a lot (translation; literally all) of those issues with him and lets them out when he fights, whether physically or verbally. But this time, the anger brewing inside him isn’t just that anymore. It’s just…more. Like the anger has levelled up like some kind of big boss in a video game. It’s become silent, but no less _there,_ no less violent, no less screaming for someone else to hurt as much as he does, as much as Lance has.

He shakes his head of those thoughts, Red radiating waves of fire that scorch and rankle the anger in him, but at the same time calm him, telling him that she’s there with him all the way. He’s impatient to get a move on already, to charge in there, all fury and fire, but he forces himself to breathe, to calm down as much as he can (which isn’t much) so that he can focus. He’ll end up getting someone hurt if he messes this up, and he’s not stupid enough to be blind to the fact that this rescue mission is absolutely riddled with holes that could send them all tripping and falling.

He can’t risk failure. He cannot be as reckless as he always is, no matter how much he wants to rush in there _immediately._ Not with Lance’s life at stake.

“Keith,” Allie says, drawing him out of his thoughts. She speaks just enough that only he can hear her as they wait for Pidge’s scan. “Can I trust you?”

He glances at her, a confused furrow on his eyebrows. “What are you talking about?” If she notices him dodging the question of whether or not he she can trust him, well, neither mention it.

“If there are prisoners on the ship,” she continues slowly. “And if I go to get them to Hunk, can I trust you to do everything you can to get my brother back?”

He frowns. “What are you planning?”

“It will take time, more time, if there are prisoners.” She looks away from the monitor with the cruiser firmly in sight, down to meet his eyes. “It will be faster if we split up.” She explains, raising her voice so that the others can hear, too. “If there are prisoners, it’ll be too complicated for us to load them on Hunk’s Lion with Lance. I know we can’t leave them behind, so I’ll teleport them into Hunk’s Lion, and come back to you.”

What?

“Teleport?” Hunk squeaks. “But Lance –”

“Is different.” She cuts him off quickly. “Witches have different strengths when it comes to magic. There’s the usual set of basic skills, like blinking and levitation and others. Lance could always manipulate water a little, and now he can crystalize it to ice. Teleportation is difficult for Lance, but it’s easy for me. Just as creation is easy for Lance, but impossible for me, and most Witches too.”

“Creation?” Shiro repeats, puzzled. Vaguely, Coran echoes Shiro’s confusion.

She nods. “Creation-destruction magic.”

“That doesn’t really explain anything…” Hunk mumbles.

“When Witches make something appear out of thin air, it’s just illusion magic. We can’t literally manifest a bird, for example, just like that.”

She lifts her hand, and a small cloud of gold dust whirls in the palm of her hand. A second later there’s a finch sitting there, not making a sound, only blinking and hopping around on Allie’s hand –but it’s not touching her skin, more hovering a little over palm. The team’s eyes widen from the screens above Red’s dashboard, staring in awe at the bird.

“If you touch it, it will disappear, because it was never really there.” She strokes a finger down the bird’s back, and it vanishes in gold smoke. “Or we can teleport it from elsewhere, but that depends on how good you are at teleportation, or if the bird can survive that pull. I told you already; Lance is a strong Witch. That’s because he has creation-destruction magic.”

Pidge asks, somewhat distractedly, “What _is_ it, exactly?”

“He can make anything appear, and destroy it. Like the bird, he can make it actually appear, and you can touch it and it won’t disappear. It will be real, in every essence of what being real means. He can also destroy it just as easily. Not kill, just…return it back into nothing. He’s never really been able to create big things; he can only create inanimate objects because creating life is just something else completely. But that is why Lance’s teleportation isn’t so good –most of his magic is centred around creation-destruction, and now whatever it is Blue’s quintessence does to him.”

Keith’s head whirls at that. Just from the name alone, ‘creation-destruction’, he can tell that it’s a powerful type of magic, even if he doesn’t really understand just how much. Allie’s explanation of it only cements the idea, and the idea of how strong Lance can be – _is_ ­–is almost more than Keith can fathom at the moment.

He remembers Lance blinking to his side and shoving him away a second before he threw his hands out and shielded them all from the space grenade the lone Galra threw at them back in the cave on Ladene. He remembers staring at the inferno exploding out toward them, billowing and raging against the invisible shield Lance held up to keep them from being incinerated. He remembers how he was frozen in awestruck wonder at Lance’s sheer strength, and wondering how he couldn’t have ever seen it before that moment.

Was that it? Was that some kind of creation-destruction magic? Was using it to stop such a big detonation in so small a space the reason Lance looked like death warmed over, especially when he was still healing from breaking his Seal?

“Allie,” Allura’s voice crackles with faint static over the comm. She’s dumbfounded. “That’s –I don’t know about Earth, but on Altea, that kind of power is equivalent to –”

“Gods,” Keith murmurs, dazed at the realization. “That’s god-like power.”

But gods aren’t real.

Are they?

Allie watches him closely, an inscrutable look in her eye. “Like I said. Lance is strong.”

“That must be why the Druid was there,” Allura mumbles worriedly. “If Haggar finds out Lance is that powerful –”

“She won’t,” Shiro affirms. Keith doesn’t point out that she probably will, if the Druid on the ship tells her. “We’ll get him back before that happens.”

For a second, no one really knows how to respond. Pidge isn’t even paying attention anymore, focusing on completing her scan, while the others just stare at Allie like she’s grown a second head. Keith’s almost sure she will, at some point, with revelation after revelation she keeps launching at them like fiery cannonballs.

Seriously –how the _hell_ has Lance managed to keep all of this from them? How the hell is he proving to be like a totally different person to the one they know, someone with scars in his past as opposed to the goofball they love?

Shiro speaks up, pulling Keith’s scrambling thoughts into some semblance of order. “Keith, can you find Lance on your own and get him out of there?”

“Definitely.”

Shiro nods. “Pidge, you got the scan ready?”

“Yeah,” she bobs her head as she looks back up at them, harsh lines painted around her eyes, skin pale. “There _are_ prisoners. Not many, but enough for a tight fit in Yellow.”

“Can you approximate how many?”

“Five to ten, possibly one or two more. Some are grouped in one cell, others are singles, so it’s a little hard to tell, but roughly around there.”

Shiro turns to Allie “Are you sure you can teleport every one of those prisoners out of there?”

“I’ve been training with teleportation for years,” she insists. “I can make it.” She looks down at Keith at that, and in her eyes is an unspoken, repeated question. _Can I trust you?_

He nods, once, curtly. _Yes._ For Lance, yes.

“All right, then,” Shiro says. He’s conflicted, not wanting to let Keith go in the ship alone, but knowing their resources are stretched thin enough. Allie being there to get the prisoners out will help, but they’ll still be working to their limits to keep the Galra distracted long enough to get Keith and Lance out, especially because they’re down a Lion without Blue. But none of them have a choice, now. If they don’t strike now, they risk losing Lance, with no guarantee that they’ll find him again.

“Okay,” he reiterates, a little firmer, a sigh hidden behind the words. “We’ll do that. Allie, you’ll start off with Keith, and Pidge will send you the location of the prisoners. You got it, Pidge?”

“Yeah, uploading it to Allura’s suit now.” Pidge confirms.

“Once you have the location, you’ll get the prisoners to Hunk while Pidge and I keep the Galra occupied. If things swing sideways –”

“The Castle will be there to aid you,” Allura chips in, determination sparking in her voice, but…it’s strained.

Keith really hopes it won’t come to that. Allura’s strong, but she’s still human –Altean, whatever, same difference –and she can’t hold the wormhole open forever.

The wrist gauntlet attached to Allie’s borrowed battlesuit beeps, and she raises her hand. She frowns at it for a moment before tapping the sleep white metal, eyes widening when a small holographic screen opens up. It’s the blueprints of the battlecruiser, hurriedly marked with tiny English labels scrawled over where rooms.

“You’ve got it?” Pidge asks. “I marked it in English because Altean is impossible and quite literally life-threatening.”

“Hey!” Coran squawks indignantly, but no one pays him mind, not with the heavy weight of the reality of what they’re doing pressing in on them.

She looks up at Pidge, then Shiro. “I’ve got the map.”

“Good.” Shiro looks at each of them in turn, confidence in every line of his body despite the wariness in his eyes, the hesitance to let himself believe in a plan so hastily cobbled together when they’re so stretched thin, the uncertainty that comes with being a leader and wondering if what you’re doing is really the right play. “All right, team. This is it. Let’s move out.”

↭§↭

_the blackness of nothing is so complete, so total, until it isn’t. until the blue comes in, mellow, hurt, sorrow, grief, flowing in and filling him to the brim until he forgets to breathe, then finds he doesn’t need to breathe. not in this place. he forgets how to breathe when the blue starts to glow, brighten, a pulse in its core, beating like a heart. purple encroaches on the edges of the blue, then lighten, darken, until it is red he faces._

_red, in so many forms that pulsate and roll over him, warming his cold, setting fire to his chill, showering him in bright sparks of light that dance with blue-white drops of snow, whirling around him in a secret dance._

remember me, _blue coaxes, shimmering in the red, twirling around it, the red clinging close, some part always touching blue, always near blue, afraid to let it go._ don’t forget me, be here for me, for them.

_when splashes of gold start to flicker around him, he remembers things. he remembers when he had his own gold, and when he lost it, when it started to fade, until there came a time when he reached for the gold in his mind and it didn’t come. it didn’t show in his hands when he moved them the way he used to when he wanted to see the gold._

_he remembers another red, a red that didn’t tease him, that didn’t comfort him. it was a red that was slick against the skin of his hands, heavy, wet, warm. it was a red that crept to his eyes when they want to come out, when they want their turn out in the world that cannot bear their weight, a world that is not theirs to be in._

_sometimes, when he sees the red he likes, he thinks,_ there’s someone i care about.

_this matters. he knows._

_sometimes, when he sees the green and yellow and black, he thinks,_ there’s people i care about.

_this matters. he knows._

_sometimes, when he sees all of the colours swirl around him in a vortex, a tornado trying to pull him up, and he sees a familiar gold swim around them all, fitting, easing in, being there where he isn’t, he wonders if they even care._

_does he matter?_

_he doesn’t know._

↭§↭

The first leg of the plan goes by easy. Surprisingly easy. Too easy –but no one will realize this until it’s too late.

Once the Galra spot the Castle, along with Hunk, Shiro, and Pidge, they immediately engage. There is no sound in space itself, but Keith swears he can hear the fighters the battlecruiser sends out exploding in the twinkling black of space, fireballs that swirl and light everything up for a few brief moments. The Lions roar in first triumph, soaring over the battlecruiser in circles and shooting at the hull, taunting the Galra into battle. Red snarls in his mind, a flame burning hot, too hot to touch. She wants to join her sisters, to tear through metal and turn it to scrap, to open her jaw wide and let loose a stream of lava to melt every fighter in sight, but she doesn’t.

She doesn’t, because she knows she must be quiet as Keith flies her to come up under the belly of the battlecruiser. She can’t be seen, because that’ll make it harder for Keith and Allie to get in unnoticed, and even though Keith wants to be out there, fighting, he needs to get Lance out first. She doesn’t, because in a distant, undefined way, they can all still feel Blue, her prickling worry, the anxious grief that has Keith hoping she won’t try to break out of her hangar and fly to her Paladin. Blue is frightening with how protective she is of Lance.

Kind of like Allie, he imagines. Probably their mother, too.

Keith and Allie exit Red, activating their jet packs to fly up to the huge expanse of dark metal above their heads. He doesn’t say anything to show that he’s mildly impressed how well Allie holds her own in such a strange environment, so entirely different to anything she’s used to. He takes out his bayard and uses it to slice a hole large enough for the two to get in, pulling himself up through the hole and reaching down to pull Allie up after him. As soon as she’s through, he shoves the circle of metal back in place so that any patrolling Galra or droids won’t notice it unless they take a closer look.

(Keith’s noticed by now that Galra soldiers and droids on patrol are very lazy. They never look up.)

They’ve entered in the hangar, entirely empty of fighters except for the line of escape pods by the wall on the other side. There are no Galra anywhere around, most already either in the fighters or on the deck regulating the droids’ actions in the fighters. He gestures at Allie, and she quietly falls into step behind him as he pulls out a map of the ship and leads the way, careful to keep an eye out for any Galra. She’s unstrung her bow and has two arrows nocked, her body moving fluid and loose as she keeps close to the walls like Keith, out of sight.

They have to duck behind a corner when the stampeding footsteps of Galra rushes past them, soldiers hurrying to their posts. Keith’s heart pounds at a furious tempo as he peeks around the corner and breathes a short sigh of relief to find the hall empty again. Before they continue, he leans back against the wall and fixes Allie with a frank regard.

“We’ll go to the prison cells together,” he tells her. “Hopefully Lance will be there. If he’s not, we’ll try to find out from the other prisoners where he is, and you stay behind to teleport them out of here while I go look for him. Got it?”

She clenches her jaw. Nods once. Maybe she’s annoyed by how authoritative he sounds. He doesn’t care, so long as she sticks to the plan, so long as they get Lance back. He keeps watching her for a second longer, wondering if she’ll try to pull something that could screw them over, before he shakes his head and pushes off the wall to continue. He may have his doubts about her, but none of them are of her loyalty to her brother.

A purple laser beam almost burns Keith’s nose off as he turns another corner. He jerks back just in time, whipping his head to the right to see two Galra soldiers, one aiming his blaster right at them, steadily walking forward as he shoots at them again and again, forcing them to hide behind the wall. The other is running right at them, to cut them off.

“Dammit,” he mutters. He looks at Allie. “We have to take them out.”

“Fine.”

They stay behind the wall for a moment, waiting for the soldiers to get to them. When Keith sees the tip of the first soldier’s blaster he leaps forward, kicking a leg out and knocking the blaster out of the hands of the soldier before twisting on his heel and driving his sword through the Galra’s gut. The Galra wheezes and buckles when Keith rips his sword out, unfeeling for the puddle of blood that spreads out under the Galra when he falls face-first to the floor, or the blood that coats his sword.

Allie growls –she honest to god _growls,_ like a –like a fucking cheetah _._ Before Keith knows it, Allie disappears, vanishing in a cloud of faint golden dust before reappearing again half a second later, only this time, she’s got her hands on either side of the second Galra’s head. She appears hovering a foot in the air, high enough that she’s at eye-level with the Galra. In the moment before the ship’s gravity drags her back to the floor, she’s snapped his neck like a twig. She lands nimbly on her feet and watches with a cold, detached look in her eyes as the soldier crumples to the ground, instantly dead after getting his neck broken.

When she turns back to him, she cocks her head to the side, watching his blank face. “War.”

Slowly, he nods. “War.”

To each their own.

They get to there in good time, the battle raging outside and sending reverberating booms through the ship as the Lions ruthlessly attack it. He hears the rest of the team talking and shouting to each other over the comms, but he mutes his own comms, focusing on his mission.  Keith swiftly knocks out the single Galra soldier posted at the door while Allie shoots the two sentry droids that appear at the end of the corridor.

She gives him an impressed look when she sees the Galra lying crumpled at his feet, and he only shoots her a disgruntled glare before he charges into the prisoner hold, a long room with cells lining each side, barred to keep the prisoners from getting out. Most sit empty, but a few of the cells are occupied, from the way some of the aliens come to stand at the bars of their doors to see what all the commotion is bout.

“Lance?” he calls out, not quite a shout, not really a whisper either. “You in here?”

_Please be here._

No answer.

Keith gestures at the wall where a ring of keys are propped on a hook. Allie jogs over to them and starts opening the cells, murmuring quiet assurances to the confusion of the aliens who slowly peek out.

“Lance?” he tries again.

“Lance?” an unfamiliar, gravelly voice repeats, coming from a cell close to the end of the room. It’s one that isn’t his voice, or Allie’s.

Keith frowns. He glances at Allie, who shakes her head in confusion before returning to her task. Gripping his bayard tight, he slowly makes way to the cell, preparing himself for just about anything.

“Lance?” he says again, tentatively.

Keith comes up to the cell, and can’t quite stop the swell of disappointment that tastes bitter when he looks inside. There’s an alien standing by the grills of the door, staring back at him impassively. They’re tall, almost seven feet, with dark red skin webbed with thin green veins crisscrossing what skin is visible through the tatters of the alien’s prisoner uniform. The alien’s eyes are black, irises a white that focus on Keith with unsettling clarity. 

“You,” the alien speaks in a gruff tone. It’s not really rude, or kind. Just there. “Know Lance?”

“Do you?” Keith throws back, noting Allie making her way down the cells toward him.

The alien nods. “I am Folhan, of the Holhan people. Lance and I met where prisoners await their turn in the arena. He’s a good man.”

Keith can’t even say he’s surprised by that. Lance is just like that –making easy friends with random aliens. It’s something Keith’s always envied, how effortlessly simple it is for Lance to go from Total Stranger to Buddies in .5 seconds. It makes Keith wonder why Lance immediately latched onto his idea of their ‘rivalry’, and hang on to it for so long until all their shared time in space together mellowed it out to…whatever they are now. Little more, little less than friends.

Allie appears at his side, almost startling Keith. He looks over her shoulder to see the aliens crowded around the entrance, whispering to each other, cowering close together, waiting. None of them are Edmynun.

“He’s not here?” she asks, hope tinging the disappointment already encroaching as she fits the key into the lock on Folhan’s cell.

Keith shakes his head, about to answer, when he notices Folhan peering at Allie. She notices too, and gives the alien a questioning look, momently pausing in opening the lock. “What?”

“You are like Lance.”

She blinks at him. “Wait, you –”

“Hey,” Keith interrupts sharply. “We don’t have time for this.” He turns back to Folhan. “I’m a Paladin of Voltron. We’re here to get you and Lance out. He’s a Paladin too. Do you know where he is?”

Folhan flinches, and Keith knows whatever they’re about to say will be bad. The tip their head to Keith’s left, to the door just a few metres away, closed.

“Down that hallway.” They answer gravely. “It is where the Druid takes prisoners. Lance was taken there two quintents ago, and has not returned since.”

Allie visibly pales at that. Keith’s heart turns to stone. There’s pity in Folhan’s eyes, and sadness.

Steeling himself, Keith turns to Allie. “Get them all to Hunk, _now._ I’ll find Lance.”

Tension radiating from every line of her body, Allie nods jerkily, returning to opening the lock. Keith watches her viciously jiggle it for a moment before it snaps open, and she yanks the door open, gesturing hurriedly at Folhan to follow her. Folhan exits their cell without a backward glance at it. Just as Keith turns to head down the door that leads to where Lance just _has_ to be, Folhan catches hold of his shoulder. Not roughly, it’s more of a gentle pull, but the touch is unexpected enough that Keith whips around, bayard half-raised, expecting to be met with a purple blaster between the eyes.

Folhan retracts their hand quickly, not seemingly offended. There’s a light of understanding in those strange eyes, and Keith has to remind himself that, considering the alien’s stature and probable strength, he might have fought in the arena, too. They know what it means to expect every touch in enemy territory to be that of the enemy. They know what it means to have to watch out for every shadow that may have a gun pointed at your back.

“Paladin,” Folhan says softly. Behind them, Allie’s waiting impatiently for him, but she doesn’t push him to hurry. “Thank you. For rescuing us, and for coming back for your friend.”

Keith frowns. “What are you talking about?” of course he came back.

“I watched Lance’s fight in the arena,” they reply. “I know that he fought part of it, and that something else fought another part of it. Edmynun used Lance’s fears against him –I am glad to see that those fears are unfounded.” They tip their head forward, gaze sharpening. “Find him, and _prove_ them unfounded, Paladin.”

Before he can say another word, Folhan dips their head in a slight bow, as if in deference, before turning on their heel and hurrying after Allie. She shoots him a hard look that clearly says, _Get your ass moving!,_ jogging up behind Folhan as they rejoin the group of prisoner aliens waiting for them.

Keith shakes his head to get Folhan’s words out, to ignore Lance’s desperate pleas in the arena when the mirages of the team hurled poisonous words at him. He forces himself to focus as he reaches out to the door, finds it locked with a hand scanner on the wall beside it. Keith’s lips twist in irritation as he yanks his glove off and slams his hand on the scanner. The door clicks open.

He glances back to see if Allie’s doing her job, just in time to see her grip one of the aliens’ shoulder, then close her eyes, brows creased in concentration. For a second, nothing happens –then a cloud of gold dust envelopes both her and the alien, much like when she blinks. She doesn’t appear anywhere else in the room.

“Holy crap!” Hunk yelps through the comms. “Oh my god, Allie, you did it!”

“I told you I can teleport.” She mutters, barely heard under the flustered chittering of the alien she just teleported to safety (relatively).

“Allie?” Shiro asks. “You made it?”

“Yeah, I’m here. I can only teleport the prisoners one by one, and there’s seven of them.”

“I can’t believe you actually did it!” Coran crows in the background. “By the stars, well done!”

“What the hell, guys, seriously, when I say I can do something, _I can do it.”_ Allie grumbles irritably. Pidge whoops in the background while Shiro sighs in relief. Keith tunes out at that and quickly darts through the door.

He comes into another hall, one that is darker, with only a single row of purple security lights lining the bottom of the walls stretching out in front of him. There are four doors in this hallway, two on each side. Keith runs to each one, using his hand and his Galra DNA to open the doors, finding each one empty. By the time he makes it to the last one on the left, Keith’s heart is beating a rapid tattoo, threatening to claw its way up his throat if he doesn’t find Lance in this room, scared of what he will find if Lance is here.

He stumbles a little as a shock rumbles through the ship. He has to take a brief second to centre himself before his hand slaps on the scanner to the right of the door, but red flashes on its screen instead of green. He grits his teeth in frustration. He doesn’t have _time_ for this.

Without giving it a second thought, Keith lifts his bayard and drives it through the scanner, ignoring the crackling electricity that bursts out of the ruined machinery as it snaps and fizzes out. Something clicks inside the door, in its locking mechanism, and he yanks his bayard out. He pulls in a deep breath, trying to steady his frazzled nerves, before pushing the door open, heart pounding.

Lance.

_Lance._

He’s here.

He’s _here._

Lance is _here._

The room is different to the one they saw in the video, and empty. It’s cold. He can feel the frigid temperature even through the thermal of his flight suit and armour. The room is bigger, with a ceiling that presses down lower over his head as Keith stands frozen at the door for a moment, his mind struggling to comprehend that, fuck, they’ve _found him._

Lance is unconscious, strapped to a metallic table that’s tilted up a bit so that he’s not completely flat. The leather-looking straps go across his neck, over his shoulders and chest, his torso, over his thighs and calves, with matching straps firmly encircling his wrists and ankles. He’s still wearing the prisoner uniform, and bile coats the back of Keith’s throat at the copper tang in the air, at the sight of dried red stains on the table around Lance’s back. His entire body, what skin is visible, is tinged a worrying shade of blue, and Keith wonders if it’s the temperature of the room that’s doing it, or if Lance’s magic is acting up even while he’s unconscious like this.

Keith’s eyes rove over Lance’s prone form, forcing himself to be clinical and collected as he searches and categorizes what injuries he can see, what he knows are there. He knows there are the lashes on his back from whipping. It explains the blood on the table. The sleeve of the uniform on Lance’s left arm is rolled up to his elbow, and there are small holes in the ashen skin, tiny pinpricks dotted along the veins under his skin. Keith’s stomach overturns when he sees burn marks tearing through the sides of Lance’s feet, still bleeding, the skin and tendons blackened and slick with blood. It’s like someone took an igniter and stroked the fire against his feet, peeling back the outer layer of skin to see what’s underneath. 

 _This wasn’t here,_ he thinks, appalled as he slowly walks into the room, inching closer to Lance, trying and failing to keep calm. He stares uncomprehendingly at all that was done to Lance in the hours since the video call. His fingers tremble as they hover over the injection pricks in the inside of his elbow, knowing that the Druid must have done something to Lance with corrupted quintessence, because that’s…that’s just what Druids do. _This –this wasn’t here._

He is deathly still on the table, so completely unlike _Lance,_ Lance who’s always moving, always talking, always smiling and laughing and doing something, anything. It’s wrong, to see him so still like this. Keith would think he wasn’t even alive if not for the sight of his chest lifting in small movements, the sound of his breath quietly whistling through his nose, misting slightly in front of him from the cold. His head lolls to the side a little from the slant of the table, unmoving, the lights throwing his face in shadow and bringing out the sharp cutting lines of his cheekbones.

“Lance?” Keith whispers, afraid to go any louder. “Can you hear me?”

No response.

“Lance,” he says again, firmer, reaching out with a shaking hand to cup Lance’s cheek, tilting his head up straight. Coarse stubble dots his jaw, and Keith inhales sharply at how _cold_ Lance is, as if he’s been dunked in a river of ice. He reaches down, finds a pulse that is frighteningly weak. “Lance, come on. Wake up –wake up, _please.”_

No answer.

“Please,” he begs, unshed tears thick in his voice, tears he’s forced himself to keep deep inside, hidden in the whirlpool in his chest leaking out now from the corners of his eyes to fall down his cheeks. He deactivates his bayard and tucks it to the loop on his belt, lifting his hand to frame Lance’s pale face in both hands. “Lance, please, say something. Wake up, _wake up please.”_

He brushes the pads of his thumbs over the black circles under Lance’s eyes, and his heart leaps to his chest when Lance’s eyes flicker.

“Lance?” he repeats, softly, no less urgent, no less hopeful. “Lance, come on, wake up. Can you hear me?”

The hope in him extends its wings like an eagle taking flight when Lance lets out a muffled, pained groan. Keith holds his breath as he watches Lance’s eyes, slowly, ever so slowly, peel open, just enough for Lance to see him. The eyes that look at him are blue, the blue he loves, the blue he hates to love to need.

Keith does not know what he would do, what he might _have_ to do, if it was red that looked back at him.

“Ke…ith?” he mumbles groggily, hoarse like his throat has been scrubbed with sandpaper. Keith doesn’t want to think about how that’s what Lance sounds like when he talks after screaming.

“Hey,” he tries to smile, brave and fearless, but it wobbles too much. “Hey, I’m here.”

“What?” Lance peers at him, as if the dim lights of the room are still too bright. He sounds muddied, confused. “Why…why are you here?”

Keith frowns. “To get you out.”

Lance stares at him blearily. “You…” the words are forced out of him, punched. “Care?”

Keith’s heart splinters.

“What the fuck, Lance,” he whispers harshly. “Of course we care. _I_ care.” _You blind idiot._

He wishes he could say more, but he can’t. It’s not the time, the place. He’s not brave enough. He’s a coward, afraid to say it. He’s always too afraid.

Lance’s eyes widen minutely, and Keith realizes, with a sinking of his stomach, that Lance wasn’t expecting them to come. At all. It doesn’t take Keith much to connect the dots, the words Edmynun pulled from Lance’s mind and threw back at him, to the way Lance sacrificed himself on Ladene.

Lance…he wasn’t expecting them to come for him. He thought they’d leave him here. He doesn’t think he’s worth the effort. Somewhere between seeing them on the screen before Radnak tortured him and the team actually getting here, Lance…he gave up.

Indomitable rage that Lance would ever _think_ that stirs inside him, and he opens his mouth to let loose, knowing this isn’t the time but he’s held it in for _so long_ already, but the comms in his helmet crackle alarmingly before he can say a word.

“Keith!” Shiro shouts, strained, startling Keith. “You need to hurry! We can’t hold off for much longer without forming Voltron. Have you found him yet?”

Lance’s eyes are on him, hazy, but aware, as Keith reaches up with a shaking hand and presses a button in his helmet. He manages to sound almost normal. Almost. “I –I found him.”

Their concern and worry explodes out all at once. Pidge shrieks like a goddamned banshee at him, poor Hunk sobs in relief and shoots out blurry questions at him, Allie tries to be heard over Coran and Allura’s allayed exclamations, all while Shiro speaks over them in an attempt to calm everyone down. Keith winces at the volume as Shiro finally wrangles control over them.

“Team, calm _down!_ Allie, how many more of the prisoners are there left to teleport?”

“Two.”

“Good. Keith, get both of you back to Red as soon as possible.”

“Copy,” Keith answers. Hesitates. “Coran?”

“Yes?”

“You need to prep a healing pod,” he tries, tries so hard to keep his voice steady, but as he looks over Lance’s bruised and battered body, it still wavers. “He’ll need it.”

A tremulous pause. “Affirmative, number four.”

He mutes his comms again and turns to Lance, to the leather strapping him tight to the table. He could just unstrap them, he knows that. He still takes vicious pleasure and pulling his bayard out and sawing through them, the sharp edge of his sword slicing through the bonds like a knife through warm butter. He’s careful once he gets to the straps on Lance’s ankles, trying not to jostle them too much, but Lance still hisses in pain.

“Sorry,” Keith mumbles, finishing those straps off. He springs up, eyeing Lance’s bleeding feet, knowing he won’t be able to walk with them, much less run. He spins around and bends his knees slightly. “Get on my back.”

Lance hesitates, and Keith looks over his shoulder to see him staring undecidedly at his offered back. “Lance, come on,” he coaxes, trying to keep his tone level, because god knows what the hell happened to Lance that Keith can’t tell from the wounds he can see. “We need to get you out of here.”

He wants to say, _We need to get you back._

He wants to say, _We need to bring you home._

He wants to say, _We need you._

He wants to say, _I need you._

He says none of it.

Afraid. Always afraid.

Slowly, bones audibly creaking as he moves and grimacing in pain, Lance leans forward and wraps his arms around Keith’s neck. Keith shuffles back a step and reaches behind to Lance’s limp legs from the table, gripping the back of his thighs. Lance’s whimper of pain right by his ear is like a spear tipped with lava piercing his heart, and Keith has to struggle to keep a lid on the rage at the Galra for what they did to Lance.

On _Radnak,_ on that _Druid._

“You good?” he asks gently after a moment of listening to Lance’s harsh pants, even just that movement of getting on Keith’s back too much for him in his current state.

“Good as I’ll ever be,” Lance breathes, pressing his forehead to the back of Keith’s neck. He shivers at the cold touch where his armour doesn’t cover, the only thing separating his skin from Lance’s being his flight suit. His next words are so quiet, Keith would think he was imagining things, but he feels them, even through his flight suit, in the way Lance’s chest pressed to his back vibrates just a little when he says, “Thanks for coming. Mullet.”

Keith huffs, the corner of his lips kicking up in a steadier smile. “There’s no way we’d leave you behind. Idiot.”

He locks his knees and shifts Lance up a little bit more with a roll of his shoulders, centring his weight more evenly. Panic flowers in the pit of Keith’s stomach because –because Lance, he barely weighs anything. It’s like he’s just skin and bone, none of the lithe muscle Keith’s spied before. This isn’t –this isn’t _right._

How the fuck could this have happened? How could Keith let Lance get taken away from him and not fought harder, found him sooner?

He makes it to the door without any problems, forcing himself to focus on getting Lance the fuck out of here, but then Lance’s breath hitches next to his ear.

“Lance?” he asks worriedly. Shit, did Keith touch a wound? “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“My bayard,” he murmurs. “My helmet. Radnak took them.”

Keith scowls. Shit. With Lance on his back like this, he can’t defend them if they meet any soldiers, but they can’t leave Lance’s bayard behind. The helmet, yeah, that’s a chance they can take, but not the bayard. They’re still down one without Shiro’s bayard, and can’t afford to lose another. Shit. Fuck, what the hell do they do?

“Hey,” Lance’s breath shivers out of him, and Keith feels his body tremble slightly. “Allie. My sister, she’s –she’s here?”

Wait.

Allie.

“Yeah,” Keith answers. “She’s teleporting the prisoners out to Hunk’s Lion. She said she’ll teleport back to us when she’s done.”

He feels Lance’s nod, forehead still pressed to the back of Keith’s neck. “Call her. Please.”

“Can you press the button on the side for me?” he asks. He’d do it himself, but he doesn’t want to risk hurting Lance any more than he already is with the movement.

Lance uncrosses his hands from the front of Keith’s chest, not raising his head as he presses the button without having to search for it, instinctively knowing where it is. Keith hears the tell-tale beep that says he’s comms are online as Lance drops his hand back to where it hands over Keith’s shoulder, breathing like there’s something stuck in his chest.

“Allie?” Keith calls out.

“You have him?” she returns instantly.

“Yeah, but how many more prisoners do you have left to teleport?”

Keith almost runs right into Allie when she appears in front of him in a mist of gold that flickers out of sight as she smirks smugly at him. “None.”

Her eyes drift to where Lance is behind Keith on his back, and they widen, her mouth dropping open as she takes a step forward, a gasp breezing out of her. Lance raises his head at the sound, and though Keith can’t see it, he imagines Lance smiling at her, if her own watery smile is anything to go by. Tears spring unbidden to her eyes, falling down her cheeks. Keith can’t tell if they’re tears of relief or sadness at how Lance looks.

“E –estás aquí.” She breathes, reaching out and cupping Lance’s cheek in her hand. Keith feels him lean into the touch, and feels like he’s trespassing in some private moment he shouldn’t be a part of. “Hermanito.”

“You’re twenty-eight minutes older, Allie,” Lance mutters. Even through the pain, he still manages to sound irritated by the fact.

“Still older.”

It sounds like an argument they’ve had many times before, one that is more a familiar exchange than a real fight.

“You…” Lance trails off for a beat. “You still have the bow.”

She glances down at it fondly, clutched in her free hand, before looking back at her brother. “Of course I do. You gave it to me, remember?”

Wait.

Hold on.

_What._

He can hear the smirk in Lance’s voice as he says, “Bet you look more Fae with it.”

She grins. “Yep. My ears got pointy, too.”

Keith stares. What the fuck is happening. Allie can _smile?_ Lance –the bow she uses is –was – _Lance’s_?

“Keith, Allie, _hurry!”_ Hunk yells at them, startling them with the suddenness of it, the panic in Hunk’s voice. He bets even Lance can hear Hunk through his helmet.

“We seriously need to get the fuck out of here!” Pidge squawks.

“Pidge!” Shiro sharply reprimands without missing a breath.

“WE’RE IN THE MIDDLE OF A SPACE BATTLE SHIRO, ARE YOU SERIOUSLY –”

“YES, I WILL AND I AM,” he roars. _“Keith!”_

“Space Dad got mad,” Lance mumbles against Keith’s neck. Probably delirious.

“Paladins, hurry!” Coran yelps, worry quavering his voice. “The Blue Lion is trying to get out of her hangar, the particle barrier will keep her from getting out but it will be very problematic if she _breaks_ out!”

Shit.

“We need to get Lance’s bayard back,” Keith explains to Allie as he starts walking as fast as he can, trying to ignore the way Lance muffles his pained groan. “It’s probably on the bridge with Radnak.”

“Can’t we just leave it?” Allie asks, exasperated.

“I need it,” Lance tells her. “You can’t make another bayard, Allie.”

Allie purses her lips. She glances down at Keith’s bayard strapped to his belt. “His bayard looks like yours, right?”

“Yeah,” Keith replies, uncertain why she’s asking. “But blue.”

 _“Exactly_ like yours, but blue?”

“I already said yes.” He snaps. “Why?”

She nods, glancing back at Lance. “Go back to your Lion. Keep him safe.”

“What’re you –” he cuts himself off when she disappears, teleporting to where Lance’s bayard is, probably. He scowls. “Is she always like this?”

Lance chuckles throatily. “That’s why I never win a fight with her.”

Keith rolls his eyes, steadying Lance on his back before continuing on his way, picking up the pace once they get through the row of open, empty cells. He meets no soldiers or sentries on the way –none that are alive, at least. All the Galra are knocked out cold, except for the one he killed in a puddle of blood, and the one Allie snapped the neck of. Sentries with holes through their metal heads or chests litter the hallways, and Keith has no doubt that those holes are because of arrows. He finds it vaguely suspicious that they don’t come across anyone trying to stop them, but he doesn’t question it. There’s no more time left.

He feels Lance tense at the sight of the stabbed Galra and the one with the broken neck. “Did she –”

“It was me.” Keith cuts in bluntly. He doesn’t know why he says it, but it’s already too late to take it back.

Lance tightens his arms around Keith. Weakly, but enough to be felt. “I’m sorry.”

Keith resists the want that has him wishing he could just wash away the remorse in Lance’s voice. “You have nothing to be sorry about. Except for being a self-sacrificing idiot.”

He doesn’t like how Lance keeps silent at that. It’s not an agreeing silence, either. More of a I’m-not-answering-because-I-think-you’re-wrong silence.

Allie reappears at his side just as he reaches where they’d entered the ship from. She has Lance’s bayard in one hand, a sack in the other. When she sees Keith look at it, she lifts it a little. “His armour. It was with the bayard.”

Good call.

“Radnak?” he asks. Remembering their conversation.

She looks at him. Shakes her head.

Keith wonders at the iron band around his heart that eases slightly. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t want Lance to feel like it’s his fault his sister killed someone. Maybe that’s why he took the blame for the two dead Galra.

“Can you teleport us back to Red?” he asks. Lance doesn’t have his helmet on and they don’t have time to fit it on, but he can’t go out into space without it.

She nods. She reaches out to touch them both, one hand’s fingers twining through Lance’s, who grips back weakly without lifting his head, and puts the other on Keith’s shoulder.

The only warning Keith has is when the edges of his vision get cloudy, but instead of darkening like it would if he were about to black out, he sees a deep yellow tinge his sight. Before a moment is over, it engulfs his sight, and all he sees is a world of solid gold. He feels weightless, like he’s drifting in space, unable to even feel his own body. His arms instinctually tighten around Lance’s legs, because that’s the only thing he can feel, and there is nothing in this universe that could make him let go.

A second later he feels something under his feet. Firm, grounding, something to keep him up as vertigo washes over him when the gold before his sight leaks out. He lifts his head and blinks stupidly around him –he’s in Red’s cockpit, standing right behind the pilot seat. He feels her stunned surprise, reaches out an inquiry, only to find the same confusion echoed back at her.

He doesn’t have time to process the abrupt change from _here_ to _there,_ _there_ to _here._ Allie moves in his line of sight, clicking her fingers in front of his face to catch his attention. Distantly he can hear the sounds of his team still struggling to keep the fighters away from Red. The Castle has joined the fray, Allura’s voice strained with fatigue as she manoeuvres the Castle and keeps the wormhole open.

When he raises his head from the floor to blearily blink at her, she lifts her hands. “Give him to me,” she says softly. It’s not a command, but not a request either.

Keith’s hands tighten minutely under Lance’s legs for a second, before he nods hesitantly. Lance doesn’t say anything, but by the time they manage to settle Lance down on the cockpit floor with Allie at his back, keeping the whiplash wounds from touching anything, a line of sweat is beaded at his forehead, his breath coming out in abrasive pants as his jaw clenches in an effort to keep from crying out. His eyes are clouded over, and once Allie’s settled beside him he leans into her, pressing his face to the space her neck meets her shoulder, his whole body shaking.

When he sees the bloodied lines streaked across his back, Keith has to bite his lip to keep from hurling at the smell of blood filling the cockpit, at the sight of the rivers of red running down Lance’s hunched, shivering back, the blood leaking from his feet, open, walking wounds.

Keith hovers uncertainly over them for a second, his overwhelming concern greying out the wonder at seeing the two together, practically identical. “You got him?”

She nods distractedly, smoothing a hand over Lance’s messy hair, holding him close to her with his head tucked under her chin as he screws his eyes shut against the rufescent of Red’s cockpit. Allie’s hands quaver as she strokes them through his hair, and Keith thinks it’s because she’s struggling to keep from just wrapping her arms around Lance and holding him close and never letting him leave her sight ever again, because look what’s happened. A year in space, fighting in an alien war, and tortured for it.

Keith knows what they’re fighting for. He knows the risks that come with it –but godfuckingdamnit, he wants those risks to fall on _him._ Not anyone else on the team, because they’re –they’re already either too soft, or have seen too much. If this had to happen to someone, it should have been _him._ Not Lance.

His heart weighs heavy in his chest when he sees the faintest of smiles on Lance’s lips, just barely there. “Blue,” he whispers.

She’s trying to break out of her hangar, to get to Lance, to her Paladin, her beloved cub.

Keith races to the pilot seat then, scrambling to fix the seatbelt on as he grips the levers and tries to ease out from under the ship’s hull as unnoticeably but quickly as he can. He unmutes his comms and calls out, “Guys, we’re ready to move!”

“FUCKING FINALLY YOU SLOW IDIOT!”

_“PIDGE!”_

“I _KNOW!”_

“PIDGE PULL UP!”

Keith pulls out from under the Galra ship just in time to see her dodge a particularly annoying fighter that doesn’t notice another jet careening toward it fast enough to avoid it. The two fighters explode in a fiery ball as Pidge turns tail and starts heading for the Castle, zooming past Hunk and yelling, “Keith’s got him, let’s get back before we’re barbequed!”

“Hurry, Paladins,” Coran urges. “Allura can’t hold the wormhole open for much longer, and the Blue Lion’s only getting more agitated by the tick!”

No one needs telling twice. Keith dodges a fighter that spots him, zapping it with a laser beam quickly before hurtling toward the Castle and the swirling mass of blue-white energy behind it, gaining speed and rushing ahead of the others. The Castle tips through the wormhole first, never stopping its open fire on the foolish Galra fighters that try to follow, all of which are eliminated by Shiro as he swipes past them. Pidge and Hunk quickly follow Shiro through the wormhole, and it closes behind them before any more Galra can intercept.

A second later, new stars unfurl before his eyes as the wormhole opens up in a different location, the frenzy of battle left behind them as the Castle comes to a floating stop, particle barrier flickering before completely dying out when the wormhole sucks into a tiny hole before completely dissipating. For a moment, Keith sits utterly still, afraid to move, eyes wide as saucers, heart pounding like a runaway train, blood rushing through his head.

They made it.

Holy fucking –holy fucking _shit,_ they made it!

“Princess!” Coran yelps.

“Coran?” Shiro asks. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Allura answers in a thin voice. She certainly does not sound fine. “Just a little woozy. We’re in an uninhabited quadrant, devoid of any Galra presence, so we’re safe for now. You got Lance back, correct?”

“Right,” Keith responds feebly, half of him still struggling to believe the reality that they actually made it. He can’t bring himself to let go of the joysticks, eyes darting about, waiting for a fighter to pop out of fucking nowhere.

“Is everyone else okay?” Shiro eventually asks, exhaustion colouring every word even through the electric crackles of the comms. “Any injuries?”

“I,” Hunk audibly gulps. “Yeah, I’m going to puke now.”

“Yellow’s not gonna appreciate tha –” Pidge cuts off with a groan when the sound of barfing filters in. She sighs. “Poor Yellow.”

“Keith,” Shiro says, ignoring Pidge’s ‘I told you so’ to Hunk when he stops puking. “Get Lance to the med-bay, _now.”_

“I’ve got a healing pod prepped and ready to go!” Coran adds in cheerily. Forced.

“Got it,” he mumbles faintly. He has a feeling he’s going to be in this odd state of shock that they’ve finally got Lance back for a while.

He glances back to see Allie whispering lowly to Lance, in Spanish, her eyes closed and a single tear trailing down her cheek. Lance’s face is tucked to the crook of her shoulder, his entire body wracked with shivers now. Keith turns back and pushes Red harder than he knows she should, but she doesn’t mind. Elation has lit a fire in her, because she knows who’s with her.

Lance, her sister’s Paladin, her sister’s cub. She gets to be the one to bring Lance back to Blue.

Even if her Paladin’s the one who actually did all the work and went into the Galra ship to get Lance.

He docks Red in her hangar as gently as he possibly can, already seeing Allura and Coran standing beside a floating stretcher, the rest of the team scrambling over each other as they tumble in through the doors in their haste to see for themselves that they’ve got Lance back. Keith unbuckles his seatbelt and launches out of the seat to kneel beside Allie, his hands hovering uncertainly over Lance, shaking. He’s still too jittery, still too nervous to be set at ease just because they’re in the Castle. Anything could happen –with their luck, he wouldn’t be surprised if something does happen right now.

“Is he still conscious?” he asks her.

“Mm,” Lance hums, answering him. “A…wake.”

Barely.

“We need to move, Lance,” Allie murmurs. “It’s going to hurt.”

He grunts weakly. “When has anything ever not hurt. Just…don’t touch my back.”

“I won’t,” she promises, catching Keith’s eye.

They work together to get Lance on Allie’s back this time, trying to do it without causing any more pain to Lance, even though he still hisses involuntary sometimes. Allie easily holds his weight, and once she’s ready, she nods once at Keith. He runs back to the exit, telling Red to open up. Her jaw creaks a little as it slides open, and Keith is out in a flash, sprinting for Allura and Coran who hurry to him with the floating stretcher, the team not far behind.

Coran has the gravest look Keith has ever seen on the Altean, no smiles or twinkling of his eyes, no quivering moustache as he demands, “Status report.”

“The whiplashes on his back. His feet have been burned, and I think the Druid injected quintessence or something in him.” Keith only warbles a little as he lists out Lance’s injuries like they’re items on a grocery list, instead of horrors Lance had to live through, _survive_ through. “He’s –he’s cold, Coran, and his pulse is really weak. I couldn’t tell if there was anything more, I –I couldn’t see.”

Hunk goes green, and he looks like he’s about to puke again. Pidge is frozen where she stands beside an ashen Shiro, Allura trying and failing to keep a look of steel calm on her pallid face. Coran is frighteningly neutral, the only hint of his distress being the suspicious brightness of his eyes and the depressing droop of his moustache as he nods curtly and turns to face Allie coming down the ramp of Red’s jaw.

The silence in the hangar is deafening when she spryly hops down the half-foot of air between the end of the ramp and the floor. Keith notices that her foot hovers in the air for a second before she practically floats down, moving slow and steady to keep from jostling Lance on her back. Once she’s settled, Lance lifts his head sluggishly, and the team collectively gasp quietly at the sight of Lance and Allie, side by side, an almost identical set of features gender-bendered in two bodies. Allie’s face is narrower, a little more pointed, but there’s no mistaking that she and Lance are twins.

Lance’s smile is rickety as an old chair falling apart, the seams of worn cloth tearing apart at the stitches. “Hey guys.”

Before anyone can say anything, his eyes roll back in his head and he slumps, forehead falling to thunk on Allie’s armour-plated shoulder, his breath shooting out of him in harsh, uneven gasps, the only sign that he’s still conscious. Coran rushes forward, the stretcher floating behind him.

Lance doesn’t make a sound as Allie transfers him from her back to the stretcher, but his pained breaths are like thunderclaps in the resounding silence of the hangar. Once he’s safely on the stretcher, Coran pushes it forward ahead of it, as if he physically needs to have his hands on it to be sure it’s with him as he hurries to the hangar doors.

Keith starts to follow him, but a hand on his shoulder stops him. He looks first at the hand, then follows the arm up to Shiro’s tired eyes. “That’s enough, Keith.”

“But I –”

“You’ve done all you could,” Shiro squeezes his human hand on Keith’s shoulder a bit, reassuringly. “Lance is here. He’s home. Let Coran do what he needs to. It’s over.”

Keith wants to argue. He does. There has to be something more he can do. He didn’t do enough, not nearly enough. He didn’t stop Lance from teleporting them off Ladene and draining all his magic so he couldn’t make it out himself. He couldn’t figure out how to get Lance back until _after_ he’d fought in the arena, until _after_ he was tortured more. He couldn’t do anything to stop the Druid or Radnak from hurting Lance; he didn’t even kill either of them for what they did. All he did was go in the ship and find Lance, barely conscious, delirious with pain. Even Allie was of more use, managing to teleport all the prisoners out before getting him and Lance out.

He didn’t do a goddamn thing.

So why are his knees weak? Why does he feel like he’s about to collapse any second now? Why does he feel like the iron band has eased around his chest, but there are spikes there now, attached to the band and aimed at his heart, inching closer and closer to piercing his skin every time he takes a breath?

Shiro says it’s over, but why does Keith feel like it isn’t, not really?

Why is he still so _afraid?_

“Allura!” Hunk jumps forward just in time to catch Allura as she slumps, faint beads of perspiration dotting her brow as she leans heavily on Hunk.

“I’m –I’m _fine,_ Hunk –”

With a final, sad smile at Keith, Shiro goes to Allura, taking Hunk’s place. With a few murmured words he gets her to agree to go back to her room and rest while Coran works on fixing Lance up in the healing pod, even as she tries to insist that she’s totally _fine,_ even though a blind man could see she’s totally _not._

Keith stares at Lance on the stretcher floating away. He lies on his side, still shuddering with cold as he curves into himself, putting a limp hand over his eyes to shield them from the brightness of the Castle’s lights. As Coran turns the stretcher, they all see the horrific painting on Lance’s back, blood caked over the weeping lines of torn flesh that criss-cross his back like a bloody tapestry. The lashes are deep, tearing through muscle, maybe even close enough to bite into bone. Keith’s head spins just at the sight of it, at the sight of blood still seeping from the open wounds on his back and the oozing burns at his feet, dripping down on the pristine white of the stretcher, staining it red.

Keith has never hated red more than he does now.

He can see Allie’s lips moving as she says something, Coran nodding sharply and replying, but he can’t hear them over the white noise in his head. He watches Allie walk on one side of the stretcher with Coran on the other, both sticking close and speaking in soft voices to each other over Lance’s huddled form as they hurry out the hangar doors, Hunk quick on their heels, Shiro towing Allura out as well.

A tentative hand on his arm stirs him out of his daze. He finds Pidge standing beside him, biting her lip nervously as she pulls her helmet off, shaking her helmet hair out before fixing him with a glare.

“Lance is going to be fine.” She says firmly, daring him to argue. Her bottom lip wobbles a bit, diminishing the effect, but the fierceness in her eyes doesn’t suffer for it one bit. “Coran’ll put him in a healing pod, and he’ll probably spend a lot of time in there, but –but he’ll be _fine.”_

Keith does something that, under ordinary circumstances, he never would, simply because he’s usually scared to. When he hears how Pidge’s voice warble, thick with tears she’s trying to keep from falling, he silently reaches over and pulls her into a hug.

She goes easily, wrapping her arms around his waist as he hunches over her a little, almost like he’s trying to shield her from all the pain that comes with being a defender of the universe and watching one of your friends, someone like your _brother,_ being ruthlessly tortured and seeing him again, broken and bleeding and still trying to smile for them.

He derives little comfort from the hug, because even though he cares about Pidge, she’s not the one he wants his arms around, she’s not the one he needs to feel the warmth of life from to know he still _is_ alive. He hopes she feels a little better, though. Pidge is too young for this.

“Please tell me he’ll be okay,” her words are muffled in his stomach, and her arms tighten a little around him. “Please tell me he’ll –he’ll be okay?”

Pidge is too young for this.

_He’s been through enough!_

They’re all too young for this.

He looks down at the whites of his gauntlets. They’re streaked with splatters of red. He doesn’t –he doesn’t know who’s blood it is.

“Keith?”

He doesn’t answer. He’s not a liar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Estás aquí, hermanito = you’re here, little brother 
> 
> Lance’s feet being burned? I don’t take credit for that. I got the idea for it from Supernatural when Lady Bitch (sorry, Bevell) from the British Men of Letters tortured Sam. Like, through all the torturous stuff I’ve seen in all these seasons, that is the one I just cringed at, because oh my god that pain, I could imagine it so clearly –so of course I had to use it.
> 
> Oh yeah, question; how would you guys expect the rest of the team to act when Lance comes out of the healing pod? Now, I’m very interested in this; what about KEITH? How would you think he’d react? 
> 
> p.s., the last couple of chapters have featured Keith’s POV heavily (this was kinda unintentional? Like I wasn’t sure how to handle Keith before and then I started writing his POV and it’s like a demon overtook me and I didn’t know how to stop), but after this that’s going to slow down. Chapter 10 will have some Keith POV, but only a little before we switch back to Lance for a good long while. I HOPE YOU MISSED OUR BLUE BOI BECAUSE I BLOODY WELL DID. Don’t worry, we’ll still see Keith again tho.
> 
> p.p.s., chapter updates are going to kind of slow down because I’m try to take better care of myself. My academic calendar is out of whack because I’m in an online school and there were some issues that prevented me from graduating a couple of months back, so I’m working double hard with more coursework to graduate in time to make the uni application period for the university I’m aiming and praying for, plus I’ve got the SAT to take on March, PLUS I’m taking a Psychology course for dual enrollment at a local university and that’s kicking my ass…basically, I’m stressed the fck out. 
> 
> Writing this fic is a stress relief for me, but I have a bad habit of not knowing how to take care of myself? Like, I’m not so out of it that I can’t recognize how messed up my sleeping schedule is (seriously, Pidge, get some fcken sleep), and I’m usually good at keeping calm (truth: I shove all thoughts of my problems into a black hole that unfortunately keeps spewing them out every once in a while) but all the lack of sleep and stress of work has me getting bloody anxious and seesawing with depression (yes, I have that) and it’s a struggle. So updates will probably not come faster than once a week, maybe two weeks. But rest assured, I am sticking with this fic! I really want to see it through to the end, and all the lovely comments from you keep me motivated. I’m sorry, and thank you to everyone who’s stuck with this allovertheplacewtfkindaworldbuildingevenisthis story!
> 
> As always (I literally always write ‘as always’ here), please do leave a comment! I hate that I can’t show you just how much your comments mean to me when I post these chapters for you to read. >_<
> 
> You can also drop by my Tumblr if you just wanna talk nonsense or Voltron or literally anything at all!
> 
> [Tumblr](https://www.azurehyn.tumblr.com) || [Wattpad](https://www.wattpad.com/user/azurehyn)


	10. remember all the faces (that i’ve seen)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The reunion, sprinkled with a dash of repressive coping mechanisms, denial, heart murmurs, and Coran’s righteous indignation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. …so this is 17k?
> 
> 2\. I’m fucking terrified of how you guys will respond to this. Holy shit.
> 
> 3\. BITCH HOLY FUCK WHO WATCHED SEASON 5 (what am I talking about of course y’all have seen it I’m the only one who’s late because of stupid work) HOYLFUCASRGEMRFOEKSMROGMEWRGMWEIRNGINF LOTOR WAS JUST AND LANCE AND LANCE AND LANCE AND THEY FINALLY FOUND PIDGE’S DAD AND MATT WAS AWESOME AND HELLFUCKINGNOTHATAIN’TMASHIROTHAT’SNNOTFUCKINGSHIROFUCKNO THAT SKUNK-ASS LOOKING BITCH STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM MY SON AND KEITH OH MY FUCKING GOD KEITH MY BOI AND KROLIA JESUS FUCKING CHRIST like literally all the Kogane’s are attractive what is this
> 
> Okay. Deep breaths. Some miscellaneous (I really love this word??) notes for this chap if any of you still care about this chaotic mess after goddamn s5.
> 
> This chapter is kinda slow, lot of talking, some fighting (verbal), but pretty slow-paced compared to previous chapters. We see finally how Lance and Allie interact, and ples be gentle if you want to criticize something about their dynamic and how I portrayed this. 
> 
> “remember all the faces (that i’ve seen)” = Lucky, Aurora (Metallic remix)
> 
> No trigger warnings this time round. Just swearing. Lots of swearing. This whole fic is a swear-fest in multiple languages (like me. You don’t get to be a 5’4 biracial linguistic-loving crazy kangaroo like me and not know how to smack someone upside down in three different languages).

Floating in a hazy cloud may sound fun, but it’s not. It’s really not.

It’s like being hyped up on drugs. You feel that rush of euphoria, but you also feel every single nasty thing the foreign chemicals are doing to your body. It’s like feeling every cell in your body shrivel and die, your veins drying up like a riverbed in drought, organs splitting open and spewing ashy dust because there’s nothing else in them, nothing keeping them together.

It is shit. Absolute shit.

It’s the absolute fucking _worst._

And it’s pretty much the same thing that always happens when he’s unconscious in _this_ specific way, in the floaty way that tells him he’s in a cryo-pod. He’s been stuffed into one enough times to know –at least, enough to recognize what’s happening, and to wonder when the fuck he’s going to wake up.

He’s a little scared though. To wake up, that is.

He remembers what happened in a vague, disconnected mess of pictures and feelings and sounds. He remembers one of the colours from before solidifying, gaining a discernible shape, dark hair with flashes of rainbows in the thick blackness set over eyes that couldn’t decide if they want to be indigo, or black, or sometimes a grey that’s like looking at melting silver. He remembers the shock that overwhelmed him to near speechlessness at the sight of fire personified, how he didn’t know if he should be ecstatic that the red came back for its blue, or scared because what if the red was trapped in this hell with the blue, with him?

He _did not_ go through literal hell just for that to happen.

Then he remembered the gold of his past coming in, seeing her for the first time in so long, and the fear that came with seeing her again because of all she’d seen of him before was his absolute worst. But that dread was washed away by the pure relief that nearly swept him under in a tidal wave he didn’t bother fighting off. He was scared of seeing her, of what it meant that she was here, but he was happy, too. She, that gold, is what he misses so much, what he’s been fighting to protect all this time.

He can have this much, can’t he? She can be here and he can see her again and know she’s safe from their war, can’t she? It’s not too much to ask, is it, after everything he’s given up already?

Of course, all this thinking happens in a distant sort of way. Kind of like you’re on an empty road and right next to you is another road that’s an actual highway with cars speeding up and down, zooming by so fast you only get occasional glimpses of what’s inside, and you’re watching those cars go by from the empty road and not really caring about how fast they go or that you might get run over by them. He knows those cars are his thoughts, and he knows he should maybe be a little more concerned with how far away, how separate he feels from them, but it’s hard to care about that when, y’know, he _doesn’t._

He’s not entirely sure how long he spends in this dissociated state that discomforts him with how little he feels anything. When a change does finally happen, he wonders if he should’ve just stayed with the flat, emotionless state, because now it feels like there’s something knitting his bones together, gluing the skin falling off his bones back so that they stick and cover the fragile muscle inside. It doesn’t feel good. There’s no pain, but there’s twinges that have spasms rocking through him every once in a while.

And he’s cold. He’s so, so cold. His veins are filled with ice, his insides turning to snowy mush that stings every time something broken in him is propped back into place. The blue in his mind, the blue that tries to draw him back to it, purrs at him, comforting him, playing with little drafts of snow to show him that the cold can hurt, but it can be fun, too. And he knows it can.

But it’s just so _fucking cold._

He doesn’t like that. He just wants to be left alone to sink into oblivion and forget everything, until he becomes nothing, until he returns to the blank emptiness from before, where he could watch the colours from a distance and marvel at their beauty, attempting to ignore the pangs of guilt when he ignored the blue trying to coax him to join the others.

He’s seeing those colours a lot now. He sees them every time he haggles himself out of oblivion long enough to watch them flit around, sometimes slowly, sometimes running away from him (the red does this a lot. It hurts every time it does. He doesn’t really get why, only that it does) a second before gold sweeps in, sometimes sitting stationary in front of with only a little movement. They’re always there, now. The pain that came when the colours disappeared never returns, no matter how long he holds his breath waiting for it to come back.

He doesn’t feel _good,_ exactly, but…he feels safe.

 

* * *

 

Keith doesn’t know where to go.

It’s like he’s reliving those times in foster care, when he’d put off going to his new-soon-to-be-old-like-all-the-others home, with a new-soon-to-be-forgotten-like-all-the-others family that only wanted him for his state-issued cheques. He’d hide out in the library, reading until closing time, and then he’d go to the playground and curl up in one of the slides, always having been small enough to do that, and just stay there for as long as he thought he could get away with. He didn’t know where to go then, so he stayed in the playground as long as he could, and when he got older and too big for that, he took to wandering the streets and trying to ignore the longing for somewhere to go in favour and tipping his head up and staring at the sea of stars above him.

He feels like that now. Except, it’s the opposite way round. Instead of having nowhere to go, he _knows_ where he wants to be, where he wants to go. Sitting cross-legged on the floor of the training room, panting heavily after another round with the gladiators, instead of wanting to stay here and put off going to the med-bay for as long as he can, _that’s_ where he wants to be. He wants to be sitting on one of the empty beds in the med-bay, staring at the glowing blue light emanating from the healing pod Lance is encased in, as if staring will make it heal Lance faster and give him back just as fast.

Except, Keith doesn’t have powers, so he can’t make Coran’s mandated two weeks pass in the blink of an eye.

Everyone was both shocked and not when Coran told them how long Lance would need to be in the healing pod. They’ve all got hurt before (Lance with disturbing propensity) but all they’ve ever needed was a couple of hours. Maybe a day, like when Lance covered Coran from the exploding crystal on Arus and Shiro was recovering from the Druidic wound he’d gotten after the wormhole incident. That was pretty bad, and even as impatient as Keith had been for Lance to come out of the pod, he’d known that it would have been a lot longer had those pods not existed in the first place.

But two?

Two weeks don’t sound like much but…it’s a lot. Especially when you have to live each day instead of fast-forwarding to when you want to be.

Keith would spend a lot (most) of his time there, passing the days as best he could by staring at the pod. It’s what he wants to do. But the thing is, Allie’s there.

He doesn’t really know why he’s avoiding Allie. Just that he is. Where before he’d warily watch her from a distance, trying to figure out what would happen once both McClain’s were on the Castle, together, now he avoids her like he made a deal with a demon and she’s the hellhound come to collect his soul.

He still goes to the med-bay. He still sits in front of Lance’s healing pod and stares at it for hours at a time. But he times himself so that he goes in the middle of the night, when there’s surely no one going to be there. He goes when he knows Shiro’s zonked out somewhere in the Castle after his nightly patrol of checking in on the other’s and before his regular readings of missions reports and flight plans that he talks to Allura about the next morning. He goes when he knows Hunk has had his midnight snack and shuffled off to bed, and when he knows Pidge is either in her room, burrowed under the covers, or sleeping in her lab, or passed out in some random spot from sheer exhaustion. He goes when he knows Allie’s in the dorm room Allura assigned her, two doors from Lance’s, and that there’s no chance he’ll bump into her.

One time, though.

One time, Allie deviates from schedule. It’s after the first week passed. He’s just settled on the floor when the doors hiss open, and he immediately tenses, back going ramrod straight as a deer-in-the-headlights look enters his eyes and he fixes the pod with a hundred-yard stare. He stays like that, the very cells of his body coiling tight with wired tension the closer those feet pattered quietly over to him.

Then Allie just drops into a cross-legged position next to him and huffs, “I do not have teeth sharp enough to bite you with. Stop acting like I’m going to.”

The tension eases out of him in increments at that. It doesn’t leave completely, but it does dissipate enough for him to glance at Allie, find her looking back at him with an oddly understanding light in her eyes, before he turns back to the pod and stares at Lance’s neutral, sleeping face within. They don’t say anything to each other, merely basking in the not-quite-companionable-but-not-cutthroat-either silence, and wait.

He’s in the med-bay room a lot after that, regardless of who’s there. Not as often as he’d like, because he can’t stay for long before the guilt eats away at him when he sees how unnaturally _still_ Lance is in the pod, but he doesn’t run away anymore.

The guilt, it hurts. It’s like little ants with teeth of metal are chewing at his insides every time he thinks about the cave in Ladene, the exhaustion painting Lance’s dusky skin white as a sheet, the blood dribbling down his nose, the pained smile a second before Lance wasn’t in his arms anymore, wasn’t _there_ anymore. But he figures that he deserves that pain. He deserves it after not being able to protect Lance better, after not doing enough to convince him that they could fight their way through the Galra force on Ladene, after Lance suffered so much because of it.

He feels like a coward every time he leaves the med-bay, unable to stay any longer. If Lance could smile at them after being tortured, why can’t he steel himself and just stay in the same room?

Keith doesn’t really know what everyone else is doing. The prisoners they liberated from the ship have all already been dropped off to one of the Coalition planets that take in refugees, so there’re only the Paladins and the two Alteans –and Allie –left on this big, too-big Castle. There aren’t many people, but the Castle is so big it’s easy to lose track of the others and what they’re doing, where they are.

(Pidge regularly takes full advantage of this.)

Allie practically moves in to the med-bay, her still packed bag propped up against the bottom of one of the beds, bow and arrows close by, the arrowheads cleaned of whatever blood and metallic bits clung to them from the skirmishes she got into on the Galra ship. She brings with her a pillow and blanket. He doesn’t know where she gets them from.

He would probably do the same thing, too –bring a pillow and blanket to set up temporary residence in the med-bay and wait for Lance. Except, he’s at least self-aware enough to realize how strange it’ll be for him to do that. Allie has a good enough excuse. Her twin brother was just tortured to within an inch of his life, pumped with corrupted quintessence that none of them have any clue of how it will react to his magic, and fought in arena where he had to listen to fake version of his teammates, his _friends,_ spout out his insecurities and fears at him before being overwhelmed by voices (that aren’t just in his head but actually somehow _real_ ) and nearly killing an alien. It would be weird if Allie didn’t stay close to her brother after all that.

Keith? He’s just a teammate. Lance’s ‘rival’, no matter how much he hates the term. Maybe they’re friends, but he doesn’t really know if they are. It’s sad, but he doesn’t know what friends are –the concept of it, yeah, he gets that. The actual reality? A bit more complicated.

He’s just the teammate that failed to protect Lance.

Maybe that’s why he’s still surprised when he wakes up after a short nap to find Allie’s pillow under his head, Allie herself leaning back on the pod, legs straight out in front of her, arms crossed, chin resting on her chest as she dozes, the expression on her partially hidden face still strangely guarded despite her sleeping state, like she’s ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice. If Blue told her everything about their time in space, surely she knew that he hadn’t been able to stop Lance from sacrificing herself, right? Didn’t she blame him for what happened to Lance?

He blinks at her, then the pillow, then her again. Before he can let exhaustion sweep him under, body aching after the gruelling workout he’d just pushed himself through two hours ago, he stands and puts the pillow next to her, and leaves.

Hunk comes in a lot, to sit and talk to Allie, and try to talk to Keith, only to be met with silence that doesn’t know how to speak. He brings food when he comes, which goes largely untouched. He doesn’t talk all the time, though. Sometimes he just sits quietly next to Keith on whichever bed he so happens to be occupying, and looks on at the unnatural stillness of Lance in the healing pod.

Other times he’ll sit with blueprints pulled up on his tablet, tweaking them and helping Pidge out on upgrades for the Lions and the Paladins’ armour (and sometimes recipes for food. Keith’s pretty sure he sees something that looks like garlic knots on the screen one time). It doesn’t take Keith long to see that there’s something decidedly calmer about Hunk’s whole demeanour. Lance isn’t awake yet, isn’t fully healed yet, but it’s like just by being in the Castle, within vicinity, helps.

Keith wants to leech some of that calmness for himself too, to ease the jitteriness in his chest.

He doesn’t like feeling like this hesitant serenity that’s settled over the inhabitants of the Castle is temporary, and something’s about to happen that will blow everything to pieces, _again._ Despite everything, despite the relief that comes with having their blue boy home, Keith’s still frustratingly on edge, replaying everything that went down on the ship they attacked.

He can’t help think that there’s something…wrong with how the rescue went. Lance is a Paladin of Voltron, the greatest foe to the Galra Empire, and Zarkon. They set a trap on Ladene specifically to capture them –if not all of Voltron, then at least some. Radnak and the Druid tortured him for information just because of his role in this war. When Allie went to get Lance’s armour and helmet, she said there was no sign of Radnak or the Druid.

Why was it so –so _easy?_ Sure, the Galra put up a fight…but more like it was just routine. Not as if they were trying to stop their most prized prisoner from being rescued.

Shiro comes in a lot as well, dividing his visits between Keith and Allie. Keith sees them talk sometimes, but they speak in too low voices, always just far enough out of earshot. He’s not sure if that’s intentional or not. Shiro looks like he asks questions a lot, worried gaze often straying to Lance in the pod. Allie sometimes answer, sometimes just stares dead ahead, other times shakes her head.

One time, he did hear Shiro ask why Lance never mentioned his creation-destruction magic to them. She told him that he didn’t intentionally lie to them, but his magic is a touchy subject for him.

“Psychokinesis is his primary ability,” she says said quietly, watching Coran stand in front of the pod and frown at his tablet. “But its basis stems from creation-destruction. All Witches have creation-destruction magic, but only in incredibly small amounts. It’s what allows me to do illusory magic. Lance is one of the strongest Witches of our generation because his creation-destruction tested off the charts compared to every other Witch in the last thousand years.”

“Have there been others with it like him?” Shiro asks, brow furrowed in concentration.

She nods. “Some Greek heroes that were actually Witches, not demigods. The last Witch with magic like that was Merlin. He was real. No one has had control over magic like that since him.”

Oh. Okay, that’s information to be filed and investigated at a later date.

“Why didn’t he just tell us?” Keith asks, no longer bothering to act like he wasn’t listening in, not with the curiosity quivering inside him. “He broke his Seal to tell us, and he even showed us some of what he can do. Why wouldn’t he tell us that?”

Allie turns to him then, spinning around on the bed she and Shiro sit on, crossing her legs and giving him a searching look before answering. “Did you like the attention you got because you’re the best fighter pilot of your generation?”

He blinks at her in surprise at the question, not having expected it. “Uh. No.”

She cocks her head to the side, not looking away. “It’s the same with Lance. Few people ever looked at him and saw _Lance._ All they saw was the powerful young Witch with magic like the famed Merlin that even the human world knows about. All they saw was some kid they could manipulate and use to their own advantage because of his magic. That’s not even talking about other Witches who hated him because they were jealous of him.”

When she puts it that way…he can understand. He hated it when other cadets in the Garrison tried cosying up to him, hoping to get some helpful tips or for him to teach them how he was so good at flying, as if he had time for it, as if it wasn’t just instinct and common sense for him when everyone else would spend hours studying flight patterns and controls to get to his level.

He’d hated it, because they were never around him for _him,_ but for what they hoped he could do for _them._ Other cadets who were jealous and envious would pick fights with him, and he’d never back down because that’s just not who he is, always returning to his dorm room with a split lip, or bloody nose, or black eye. Shiro always found him after those fights, and would tend to his wounds even despite Keith’s moody glaring.

The realization makes him wonder how much more of Lance has been hiding from them all for the last year. Is that why Lance started that stupid rivalry? Because he thought all those opportunists surrounding Keith back at the Garrison were around him for _him,_ when really they only wanted to get what benefits they could from hanging around him?

Something hollow opens up in Keith at the thought. If only he’d known, he could have told Lance that that was all wrong, that they were the same, that most people only wanted to be around them for what they could do, and not for who they are, not for just being around them for their company.

When Shiro comes to Keith he, thankfully, doesn’t talk. He knows when Keith’s willing to talk, and when Keith’s willing to murder anyone who tries to talk to him when he does _not_ want to talk. When Keith does talk, though, it’s to bring up his concerns about how easily the rescue went. Shiro agrees that there was something off about it, and Keith’s glad to know he isn’t just being paranoid over nothing.

“We’ve got him back, Keith,” Shiro sighs as he claps a gentle hand on Keith’s shoulder. Keith wonders if Shiro thinks he hides the trouble light in his eyes half as well as he thinks he does when he smiles encouragingly at Keith. “For now, let’s just focus on getting him better again, and showing him that what Edmynun exposed about what he thinks of himself isn’t what _we_ think. We need to show Lance that he _is_ wanted, and that he _is_ needed. We’ll deal with everything else after.”

Keith sees him and Allura talk a lot, though, looking worried every single time they did.

Pidge brings him his morning tea, despite once absolutely swearing she would never touch the ‘mellow, disgustingly sweet concoction of delusion’. He never really says thanks beyond a grateful grunt when she hands it to him, simply hoping she can adequately translate his Neanderthal appreciation. The tea is something he has to drink every morning or he’ll get a headache that’ll stick with him like a wraith to a warm body for the whole day. In the beginning he didn’t have this dependence on the Altean tea, but after he started drinking it every single morning since coming to space, his body developed a need for it. It took him a few times to realize that the headache he’d sometimes get was because he’d missed his daily intake of tea.

Every time Pidge comes in with the steaming cup of brewed tea, she says, _You’d better get tomorrow’s cup yourself._ And every morning, without fail, she brings another cup of tea to him, and says the same thing before setting herself up on the floor in front of Lance’s healing pod with her laptop, crunching on one of Hunk’s food goo bars as she loses herself in tech to escape the anxiousness niggling at them all as they wonder what will happen when Lance comes out, and how they’ll help him through it.

Allura and Coran are always around, too. Allura frequently checks the monitor on the side of the healing pod, going over the Altean lines of text and diagrams that feed her information on Lance’s status in the pod. Other times she sits with Allie, who asks her a lot about Altea, to which Allura gladly answers. Coran does the same with the monitor, sometimes minutely adjusting the settings, other times double-checking that the monitor on the pod matches the feedback his tablet receives about Lance’s condition. But beyond that, there’s nothing more he or Allura can do to speed up the pod’s process.

All they can do, all any of them can do, is wait.

But waiting?

It is shit. Absolute shit.

It’s the absolute fucking _worst._

Everyone is suspended in an awful period of _waiting_ and hoping that when Lance comes out of the healing pod, he’ll be okay. Or at least that they’ll be able to help him through what he went through, even though Allie still holds her silence about their past until he wakes up.

Most of him is eager to know what more Allie has to say, what more Lance will say. He won’t admit it out loud, but the curiosity is eating away at him, gnawing at his bones and thrumming through his brain that throws idea after idea at him, unable to help himself from wildly speculating.

But he can’t quite deny the part of him that is scared to learn of Lance’s past, and what demons –both metaphorically and quite literally –are in it.

 

* * *

 

 

When Lance saw the gold with those colours he loves, he gave up. He thought that the gold matches so well with them, fits in so easily, doesn’t cause problems where none need to be. He wondered, why would he need to be there? Why would they need his colour if they already have the gold he’d lost?

But now when he sees the gold together with the red, the yellow, the green, the black, the pink and orange, he doesn’t feel scared, and alone, and abandoned. His blue twines around him, purring, encouraging him to be strong, to be brave. He’s a little apprehensive, because he knows the gold being here means he’ll have to talk…but he doesn’t find himself quite so terrified of the prospect as he used to be. He’s gone so long trying to shoulder the dead weights of his past all by himself, refusing to let anyone else come just close enough to touch it. He thinks it might be a good thing if he lets them know.

He’s still scared of telling them. There’s no other way around it; Lance is terrified that once the truth is out there, they’ll cast him out. Why keep some mentally compromised, constantly homesick boy with them when they can easily find someone more suitable than him?

But they came back. He reminds himself that _they came back._ Heavy chunks of his memory are missing, leaving behind gaping pits that are familiar, that he knows are because of the voices. He doesn’t know what they did, he can’t remember what they did with his body, but he knows that his friends must have seen it. He’s afraid to tell them what the voices are, why they’re stuck in his head, because he worries that they’ll turn their backs on him once they know everything.

But they came back. They came back even after seeing the voices. They still came for him, knowing he’s been hoarding huge secrets from them. If he takes that final leap of faith and puts his trust in them, they’ll catch him, right? They wouldn’t go through all they had to bring him back if they were planning to give up on him anyways, right?

Right?

 

* * *

 

Sometimes Keith wonders if part of the reason Allie refuses to leave the room unless absolutely necessary is because she’s still suspicious that the healing pods are genuine alien coffins. He can’t help but think about how Lance would laugh at that, probably endlessly tease his sister for that very unfounded fear.

(Truthfully though, the pods do look kind of like alien coffins, but no one has ever voiced this because Coran is fiercely proud of every single part of the Castle, including the pods. Fiercely proud like a soccer mom. Soccer moms get scary when you question the integrity of something they are proud of.)

(Keith would know. He once bluntly questioned –without really meaning to be rude about it, but he’s social graces are non-existent at best –whether this one kid should actually be on the track team in one of his many middle schools when the kid was slow as hell, within vicinity of the kid’s mom. It wasn’t pretty.)

On the fourth day of silently sitting beside each other, after Keith stops running away from the med-bay every time someone else is there, Allie starts talking. She speaks in a low, quiet voice. She doesn’t tell him why there are voices in Lance’s head that can possess his body. She doesn’t explain to him what Lance’s memories mean. She doesn’t tell him any more of the Witch world, and why they’re fighting a war, or why there’s a Ladenian on Earth who left Lance alone, leg broken, next to the dead, bleeding body of his brother.

Instead, she tells him stories.

Stories of some of the weird things she and Lance have done together, or just Lance, because the boy has the uncanny propensity of drawing some downright weird shit his way. The shenanigans the two of them drew their other siblings into, only to get the whole lot of them in trouble with their parents, and then how Lance would get their younger siblings’ cuteness, Andrea and Mattie, to lessen the punishment sentence.

(Keith doesn’t understand how that would work until Allie actually rifles through her bag and pulls out a picture of her and Lance with the little ones and their parents, and the older brother –Alex. When he sees Lance’s little brother and sister, he can understand how they might be used for ammunition.)

“Once,” she says. “Our parents went on a trip for three weeks, and they accidentally left the cabinet where they keep their alcohol open. We were thirteen and we were so stupid,” a wet chuckle that gurgles in Keith’s ears. Her eyes remain dry, but shine under the fluorescent Castle lights. “We opened the bottle of vodka, it was still full. We only had a little the first time, and it burned. Lance acted like he was going to burst into flames, but we still went back a few times and had a few more sips. We didn’t even notice that we’d gone through half the bottle until Mami and Papa said they’d finally open that bottle. We couldn’t refill it because it had one of those stupid stoppers.”

Keith knows what kind of stopper she’s talking about. A lot of the foster homes he was recycled through had adults who firmly believed that the secret to life lay in the depths of the clear liquid swirling in a tall, slim bottle.

“What did you do?” he asks, the faintest smile on his lips as he tips his head back to look at Lance as he sits on the floor beside Allie, food goo plates untouched between them.

“We went nuts,” she answers with a self-deprecating chortle. “Lance even tried to create more, but that failed. We freaked out and thought we’d get away with it if we said that yeah, we tried it, but before we knew it half of it was gone. Tía Marina shot that amateurish idea down so fast.”

“Tía Marina?” he echoes questioningly.

“Our aunt. Crazy strong. She can lift that bed,” at this she points at the bed Keith usually frequents when he’s not hanging around on the floor. “With her bare hands. No magic.”

“Damn,” he murmurs, impressed, and maybe a little terrified. “Why was it an amateur move?”

“It showed that we’d drank enough before to know when we’re tipsy. Because like, how the hell would we know what tipsy is if we’d never had alcohol before like that?”

Smart move going to their aunt, then. “Had you?”

She shakes her head. “A sip here and there, wine Mami sometimes let us have on special occasions.”

“So what did you do?”

Allie smiles fondly. “Tía Marina told us to tell Mami and Papa that we had only one shot each, but we accidentally knocked the bottle over and half of it spilled before we could stop it, so we just replaced the stopper and we’re so, so sorry our curiosity got the better of us.”

“That’s smarter. What did you parents do?” he asks.

“They grounded us for a month.”

“Only?”

She shoots him a disgruntled look, one that Keith can perfectly envision on Lance’s face from how many times he’d been on the receiving end of it already. “Tía Marina wanted it to be for two months, one for each of us, so that we’d learn our lesson.”

“Did you?”

“Heh,” she smirks. “I got very good at teleporting bottles, and Lance got very good at creating liquids. We never went overboard, but we never got caught, ever.”

He can see, so clearly, why Lance loves his family so much. Hearing Allie’s stories opens up a pit in Keith’s chest, a hole where he’d buried his intense longing for a family of his own. It hurts, to hear of Lance’s family life, but he can’t bring himself to ask Allie to stop, because this is a facet of Lance that Keith wants to know, that he doesn’t know how to ask of from Lance himself because he’s scared to.

Scared of what? He’s not entirely sure himself.

Allie’s quiet more often than she is talking. And when she’s quiet, Keith unintentionally finds himself drifting to some serious metaphorical musing shit that he’d really rather not think about, because the introspection of it is just gloomy as hell.

(He thinks about asking Allie if hell is real, since demons are real, but thinks better of it. He doesn’t want to stir up any bad memories. He knows all too well how easy it is to set an unwanted memory off with just a few seemingly harmless words.)

More often than not, Keith finds himself thinking about this one time Keith’s middle school class went on a field trip to the beach, way before he joined the Garrison. While the rest of his classmates played in the water, he sat out, toes dug into the dry, hot hand, waiting for a crab or something to pinch him. He couldn’t swim back then, no one ever taught him or paid for any swimming lessons. He’d stared enviously at the other kids splashing around, wishing he could do the same, but still scared of the water and actually _trying_ to get near it.

When it hurt too much to keep watching them, he’d looked down at the sand burrowed around his feet. His attention was caught by this little black ant, repeatedly trying to climb up the incline of the sand, what must have looked a mountain or formidable hill to it. It kept getting knocked off by the strong, warm wind just as it reached the top, only to tumble back right to where it started.

He doesn’t know why, but the image of the stubborn, struggling ant stuck with him all through his life. He’d find himself thinking about the ant every once in a while, for no real reason, and wonder if the wind ever let up, if the ant ever made it out of the little valley of sand it was stuck in. the teachers had called the kids over for lunch and he’d abandoned watching the ant’s endeavour in favour of sprinting to the front of the line, hungry, knowing that the sooner he got his lunch and gobbled it up, the sooner the bullies’ ravenous eyes would move on to another target, leaving him unbothered.

Right now, in space, god knows how far away from Earth and its beaches and ants, he thinks that, metaphorically of course, he’s the ant, and almost everything else in the universe is the wind, constantly trying to know him flat on his back and keep him there. He knows it’s probably like that for a lot of people, but it doesn’t make the unfairness of it all sting any less.

Sometimes he wonders which one Lance would be in this equation. The wind, or the ant, like him.

(The crab never pinched him. Nothing did.)

 

* * *

 

 

The team have all converged in the med-bay on the day Coran allotted that Lance would come out of the healing pod. Everyone’s impatient to see their blue Paladin again, and dealing with it in their own way.

Allura and Shiro talk quietly together (they’ve been doing that a lot lately, and no one knows what it is they talk about, even despite Pidge’s terrifyingly ingenious methods of eavesdropping). Coran and Hunk are talking about improvements on the Paladins’ armours, something that will pique everyone’s interests as soon as those improvements are actually implemented.

Pidge is with Allie, surprisingly; the two were off to a rocky start, but Pidge’s monumental curiosity can only be held back for so long. There are occasional flashes of gold in the room as Pidge fires off question after question about magic. They all decide to take it as a good thing that Allie’s willing to at least show them what she can do, if not explain everything just yet.

(At one point, another illusory bird –this time a hummingbird –flies across the room, startling everyone because they haven’t seen or heard the cheerful twittering of Earth birds in _so long,_ before it flew back and hovered an inch over Pidge’s giggling head. Pidge couldn’t _quite_ disguise the sad look on her face when she reached up to touch it and it disappeared into gold dust.)

Keith’s antsy, leaning against the wall by the door with his arms crossed over his chest and just _glaring_ at the fucking healing pod. It’s happening today, so why can’t it happen _now?_ How the hell much more time does it need?

Coran, almost as if he’s drawn to negative sentiments against any parts of the Castle like a moth to a flame, drifts over to where Keith subtly glowers at everything. Coran receives the same treatment, but is entirely unperturbed by it as he leans against the wall as well (he doesn’t cross his arms like Keith does. Even Coran knows he’s well past the age of sulking like a teenager).

“You know,” he muses. “Staring at the pod isn’t going to make it pop open any faster.”

Keith grunts, and that is his only answer.

Coran sighs. “I know you are understandably angry with the way things have turned out, and I know you want answers for Lance’s…renunciant behaviour. But go easy on him, all right? He’s been through a lot, more than what we’ve seen or know.”

Keith shoots him a sidelong glance at that, carefully picking what to say next. “Do you know what effect the corrupt quintessence had on him?”

Coran had given them all a status report once Lance was safely hooked up in the healing pod, repeating what Keith had said, as well as confirming that it was, indeed, some form of quintessence used on Lance. Allie and Allura worked together to draw the corrupt quintessence from Lance’s body before they put him in the pod. Apparently, Witches have several types of magic they can be good at –healing is one of them for Allie.

She pulled the quintessence out of Lance’s body and into her own, serving as a living conduit for Allura to safely draw the quintessence out of Allie and into a vial that is now safely locked away somewhere in the Castle. They all know that the single vial probably wasn’t all of the quintessence in him, but they hoped that after getting most of it out it would mitigate what effect it has on his magic, in addition to what the healing pod has been able to heal.

He remembers making it to the med-bay with Pidge by his side just as Allie and Allura had finished. Allie was barely able to stand, leaning heavily on Allura as she stared at the vial of quintessence, sickly yellow laced with black. She was so pale, deep shadows nestled under her eyes, sweating and wracked with shivers.

Allie hadn’t been the one to get continuously injected with the quintessence, and she looked like she was suffering from cocaine withdrawal. What the hell is Lance going to be like when he comes out? He looks fine now, in the pod, the bruises on his face all but gone, and though he’s still pale, it’s not as bad as when Keith found him. He looks fine now, but what has all that quintessence done to him?

Coran shakes his head. “Unfortunately not. Most of the quintessence was removed by the Princess and Allie, with barely detectable traces left in his system, but we won’t know for sure until he’s out of the pod.”

Keith returns to glaring at the pod. “And when will that be?”

He doesn’t see the knowing, fond smile on Coran’s face as the Altean gently claps him on the shoulder, startling him out of his sullen brooding at the unexpected touch. “Any time now, number four. Any time.”

  

* * *

 

 

Lance is utterly _boneless_ when he takes a single step out of the fucking freezing cold, only to have his knees buckle because, y’know, his legs are literal mush. The floating feeling that’s kept his head in a clouded fog dissipates all at once, rather harshly, and he doesn’t have enough time to gather his scattered wits about him before he feels himself plummeting, and bracing himself for impact.

Instead of splattering into a Lance-shaped pancake, though, a burly pair of strong arms catch him around the waist with a startled huff of surprise, a chorus of voices clamouring right after. The second those arms wind around him to keep a firm hold and stop him from collapsing, warmth floods through Lance’s entire body. He groans, the sound scratching at his throat as he ducks his head and rests his forehead against what feels like a wide expanse of chest.

“You’re out!” the relief in that voice can only be Hunk, the sound of it vibrating against Lance’s ear. “Oh my god, it’s so good to have you back, man!”

“Hey, buddy,” he manages to weakly wriggle an arm out of Hunk’s grip around him to pat at his shoulder. “Nice to hug ya again.”

Something clatters on a hard surface before he hears several feet pattering over to him. “Holy shit, he’s awake!”

Even though Lance keeps his eyes closed (no one ever talks about how fucking _draining_ healing pods are when they’re spit you out after stitching you up), he knows who that is. And in T-minus three, two, one –

“Pidge, seriously.”

Ah, there it is.

“Oh, c’mon!”

“Don’t you ‘c’mon’ me, young lady.”

Lance can’t help smirking at that, gathering the strength to try and maybe actually _feel_ his legs. “Space Dad’s mad again, Pidgey. You’re on a roll.”

“Is that seriously the first thing you say,” Pidge grouches. Even through Lance’s foggy state, he can hear the relief. It makes something in him hum and warmth.

Lance feels the rumble of Hunk’s quiet laughter as he says, “Welcome back, buddy.”

Lance just hums in response, not quite yet up to holding a full-length conversation –never mind standing on his own and opening his eyes.

“Hunk,” that’s Coran, definitely Coran’s ever cheery voice. “Sit him down on the bed, let him get his bearings.”

“Uh-huh, sure thing,” Hunk affirms, the strength of his arms not wilting a bit as he bodily moves Lance around and sets him gently down on a flat, not-hard-but-definitely-not-soft-either surface.

Lance is grateful for that –he can’t even bring himself to open his eyes, never mind move on his own. He’s still so strangely disoriented, like he doesn’t know what’s up and what’s down and where his feet are supposed to go. His body is weighed down as if lead flows through his veins instead of blood. He just barely manages to keep himself upright when he’s on the bed. There’s a concerning emptiness in his chest where he normally looks for his magic, but he tries not to focus on that just yet. Slowly, like he’s peeling them open after having them glued stuck together for aeons, Lance opens his eyes, just slightly, peering at the people standing around him through the harsh lighting of the…med-bay?

Standing around him in a loose circle are his friends. Lance is pretty sure the ear-splitting grin on his face very well nearly breaks his jaw, but he can’t help it when he sees the looks on their face, when he sees them all alive and well. Hunk is by his side, grinning toothily at him with one arm firmly wrapped around his shoulders, a comforting presence that warms him from the freezing cold that he objectively realizes was the healing pod.

Pidge is on his other side, and before he’s even aware of it, she’s wound her arms around his waist, pressing her face to his side. He chuckles a little at that, and even though the edge of her glasses are digging in to his stomach, he doesn’t complain. He just wraps his arms around her as best as he can, worriedly noting the boniness of her shoulders under the baggy shirt she wears.

“Hey, Pidgeon,” he murmurs. Lance ignores the flutter of goosebumps that ride along his skin at the touch –he doesn’t want to be touched right now, but he forces his discomfort away. If his friends need to hug him to reassure themselves that he didn’t die, he’ll give them that.

Even if it feels like snakes are writhing under his skin, in his veins, hissing at the touch, birthing scorpions that crawl over his arms and sting his legs and pinch his neck.

“You idiotic Noodle.” She mutters in a low grumble that is muffled against his side. Her hair is sticking out all over the place, just enough for him to know she’s probably not gotten much sleep, if any, in a while. Her hair always does this when she doesn’t sleep. “If you ever do something like that again, I will kill you, reanimate you, then kill you again.”

Lance smiles faintly as he closes his eyes and rests his cheek against the top of her head, squeezing her tight as he can –which isn’t much, he realizes, but it’s the thought that counts –and trying to reassure her that he’s here, and not dead. His chest squeezes tight when his mind starts to wander on its own, but he yanks it back into the present, into this moment, rather than let it drag him into memories he adamantly refuses to let himself think about right now.

Lance looks up to see Shiro and Allura standing side-by-side in front of him, both smiling so warmly that his heart nearly melts. The shadows under Shiro’s eyes look like a painter went mad on him, but the almost parental fondness in the stormy grey can’t be missed as Shiro reaches out with his human hand and gently ruffles his hair (it’s all he can do, really, what with Hunk and Pidge staking claim on Lance for now).

“It’s good to have you back, Lance.”

His smile widens at that. “Good to be back.” Then he frowns. “There were –there were others –”

“They’re okay.” Shiro answers calmly. “We got them off and to Arkankak, a planet that takes in refugees.”

Lance sags a little in relief. He doesn’t want to think about it, about any of it, but he does remember impossibly white eyes in a Drax-like alien. Folhan. They were there. Folhan was there. They even tried to stop the guards taking Lance –taking Lance –the guards, they wanted to

_Stop stop stop stop stop stop –_

Shiro asking, “How do you feel?” drags him out of the spiralling thoughts of _stopstopstopstop,_ and Lance glances up, blinking slightly in confusion before looking down.

He pauses before answering, taking stock of himself. He feels…weirdly fine. There’s still the worrying absence of his magic, but –but he’ll think about that later. Later, when he’s alone and ready to remember what happened, to figure out how messed up he probably is, what he’ll have to do to hide it from the others. There are aches in his feet, and when he glances down he sees that the skin on the sides of his feet are very pink (he remembers he remembers it he remembers it the pain the pain the _burning_ stop stop stop don’t think don’t think don’t think). His back tingles a lot (screams, broken _screams_ that ratchet around in his skull like bullets clattering around), almost itchy as he shifts his shoulders slightly under the beige med-bay suit, but there’s no pain.

(Stop thinking stop thinking _stop thinking_ )

He shies away from the memories that nudge at him, whispering for him to let them in, let him see, as he shoots a crooked smile at Shiro. “A-okay, bossman.”

Shiro lifts a brow, whether at the name, or something else. He doesn’t answer, but there’s a healthy dose of scepticism in his eyes as he steps to the side. Allura doesn’t even bother saying anything as she leans forward and pulls Lance into a hug when Hunk lets go of him for her to do that at least (Pidge doesn’t let go. She keeps one arm firmly around his waist to keep him from going anywhere. Lance won’t admit aloud how endearing he finds that).

“We missed you,” Allura says quietly, her voice suspiciously thick. “We really did, Lance. You have no idea.”

Lance is surprised at the open display of affection from the Princess for only a moment before he hooks his chin over her shoulder in a small gesture of returning the hug and mumbles, just as quietly. “Thanks for coming for me, Allura.”

Over her shoulder, he spies Coran, who shoots him a big thumbs-up and wide grin that Lance returns with a smile of his own. Behind Coran, Keith is leaning against the wall, arms folded over his chest –but instead of looking _just_ angry as the low set of his brows would normally have Lance believing he is, Lance feels like the way Keith’s holding himself is almost like he’s trying to protect himself from physical blows. His shoulders are hunched down, arms tightly crossed, and though he’s clearly glaring at Lance, when their eyes meet, Keith allows a very small smile to curl the corners of his lips that softens his whole demeanour, just a bit. He nods at Lance, once.

As Lance nods back in a small move, he wonders if healing pods have a side effect of heart murmurs. He’s just a teensy weensy little bit hurt that Keith is so far away, that all he gets is a nod of acknowledge (and maybe more, he’s currently too brain-adled to really tell), but he takes what he can get.

 _He’s never been good with emotion,_ he reminds himself. Maybe before he’d think it’s something against _Lance_ himself, but he knows better now. He knows not to take it personally.

(Okay, if he’s being honest he still thinks that, but it doesn’t hurt as much as it had when Keith didn’t remember him when they rescued Shiro.)

(Still hurts though.)

(Quiznack Keith and his incompetent social manners.)

(Why the hell is he getting so _sad_ that Keith isn’t closer?)

(Quiznack.)

“Do you…do you remember what happened?” Allura asks tentatively, pulling him out of his confusing thoughts regarding the red boy. There’s concern in every word as she leans back with her hands settled lightly on his shoulders, as if to keep him steady.

He glances away from her penetrating, kind eyes. He does. He does remember, and he sorely wishes he’d knocked his head so that he could have amnesia now. He remembers, but gods, he doesn’t want to talk about it. He doesn’t want to; he doesn’t _want_ to –

“It’s all right, Lance,” she continues kindly, seeing the mild flowering of panic in his eyes. “We don’t have to talk about it now. It’s just good to have you back with us.”

His smile would be handsomely lopsided if it wasn’t so unsteady despite his best efforts. “Thanks, Allura.”

She nods and steps to the side next to Shiro. He finally sees the person standing just a bit behind Coran, quietly watching everyone as they welcome Lance home. His heart clenches as his eyes widen, a nervous swirl of a little worry and panic blended in with overwhelming relief and happiness washing over him. The mix of emotions is a little nauseas, but he doesn’t pay attention to that as a soft sound escapes him.

“Allie,” he breathes, too choked up to say more. _“Allie.”_

He barely registers Pidge unwinding herself from his side, or Hunk’s helping him stand on shaky legs. He doesn’t even notice he’s on his feet until Shiro’s steadying hand is at his elbow, helping to keep him up as he wobbles over to Allie. He doesn’t miss the guarded, wary look Allie gives the rest of the team, but when she finally meets his eyes, hers are flooded with tears. She leaps forward and throws her arms around him.

His laugh is shaky and watery with his own unshed tears as he stumbles a bit, but Shiro’s hand between his shoulder blades keeps him steady as he winds his arms around her shoulders, burying his face in the loosed curls of her hair. He feels Shiro step back at that, and though he knows the rest of the team are still very much in the room, he’s thankful that they give him space.

“Hermana,” he whispers hoarsely, squeezing his eyes tight as he tries to reconcile his utter disbelief at her being here with the reality that she _is_ here. He runs a hand down the soft curls of her hair, longer than he remembers, smiling faintly at the flick of her ears – _pointy ears, she has pointy ears, I never thought I’d see this –_ when he does that. “Didn’t think I’d be seeing you here.”

“Estúpido,” she returns in a croaking voice, pressing her face into his shoulder. “You think I can con a black market kelpie but won’t find you?”

He laughs softly at that. Those were the times (except, at that time he was actually cocky enough to think bargaining his soul with a goddamn kelpie for some stupid trinket was a good idea, so maybe she’s on to something there). “Have you been stalking me?”

“I literally cannot leave you alone for more than five minutes or you will most definitely land into some trouble. The hell do you expect me to do. We’re in _space._ Mami didn’t think of _this_ when you said you wanted to be a fighter pilot.” She pauses, tipping back to look at him directly. “Them?”

_Why else do you think Blue isn’t talking to you?_

_:we’ll save you:_

He closes his eyes.

_Why would I want to be friends with you? You’re annoying._

_:let us in:_

He taps his forehead gently to hers, shoulders drooping as his mind fizzes with black spots dancing at the edges of his memory.

_You’re only here because you were conveniently there in the cave when we found Blue._

_:we’ll protect you:_

His stomach sours as Allie murmurs, “Are they here?”

_You’re more of a liability. Even with magic, you’re just a useless cargo pilot._

_:LET US IN:_

He shakes his head. “No.”

Blessedly. At least for now. The voices have never been so quiet, not without his forcing them behind the mental door he locks on them. He can still hear them, vaguely, but not really. It’s more like listening to the rustle of clothes sweeping on the floor. Background noise he can easily filter out. Maybe it’s because Allie’s here. He doesn’t really get how it works, but their being twins is like a scale. When she’s near him, the scales are balanced, and the voices are easier to control, to lock away.

When she’s not, though, the scales are tipped heavily to one side, and the voices become a constant companion in his head, their vague murmurs turning into whisper-shouts, never leaving him alone for too long.

He feels her sag a little at that. “Lance?”

“Hmm?”

“I hate you.”

“I love you too.” He smiles ruefully, already knowing what she’ll say next, and what he’ll say. It’s not from any prophetic déjà vu, but just from knowing Allie so well, from having done this time and time again.

Like clockwork, she curls into his embrace, muttering, “I really hate you.”

His arms tighten around her shoulders. “I know.”

“I really, really hate you.”

He presses his face into the mane of curls tumbling down her back, breathing in the smell of Earth, of home, that still clings to her, out here in the vacuum of space. “I know.” He pats her back, frowning at how easily he can feel her ribs and shoulder blades hidden by the baggy sweater she’s wearing. His tone is both teasing and serious when he adds, “Child, why can I feel your bones.”

She sighs. “That’s a long story.”

“There’s no such thing as time in space.”

“You only get that point because you’ve been here longer. You’re used to this.”

“Sure, sure,” he soothes. “If it makes you feel better.” He leans back then, her arms around his waist being the only thing really keeping him from slipping to the floor at this point. He fixes her with a stern look, one she returns with her ears pressed back against her hair, like a sulky child. “Does that story have to do with why your daggers are in your sleeves?”

Something he recognizes, something he fears, flickers in her eyes as she presses her lips to a fine line. It’s a look he’s seen many times, on many Witches and Warlocks. But never, ever has he entertained the thought that he would see the bleak look in her eyes.

Instead of answering, she nods at the rest of the team standing behind him. “We should get you something to eat.”

“Allie.” He says firmly, not budging even when she starts to move, to turn him around, to shift his unwavering focus from her back to his friends. He knows he needs to talk to the team, he’s aware that his stomach is mere seconds away from moaning like a dying whale from hunger, and he knows that maybe a little part of him is still goddamned scared of talking to them.

But that look.

That look of _grief_ in her eyes.

The others can wait. He knows they can. Even Keith’s impatience can wait, and he knows it can, but he sees Keith shifting from the corner of his eye, walking around them to stand with the rest of the team, and Keith doesn’t say anything about getting answers after all the absolute fuckery that’s happened.

If Keith can wait, the others can too.

“Allie,” he repeats. He moves his hands from her shoulders to her cheeks, smushing her face a bit before he relaxes his hold and says, “What happened?”

Her eyes flick to the right. His stomach tightens. _She’ll lie to me._

They shift to the left. _Please tell me the truth._

Right again. _Don’t lie to me._

Left.

She visibly gulps as she drops her eyes to stare at the ground. “Please, Lance,” she murmurs quietly. “Please, not –not now.”

His heart crumples like dented metal being crushed under a heavy weight at her words. He wants to, _needs_ to know what happened that she could look like this. They’ve both been through so much, and yet, she has never ever looked like this, so utterly defeated. When the voices got so bad that he’d just lie in bed and stare emptily at the ceiling, when they got so bad that he cut too deep and ended up in the hospital after almost dying, it was always Allie’s fire and will to defy that kept him going. She refused to let her brother succumb to his demons, and he’d relied on her strength for so long.

Whatever’s happened now, he knows it’s bad. Probably worse than anything he could think of.

But he won’t press her for answers. Allie faces things head-on. She doesn’t beat around the bush. If she’s asking for more time now, he’ll give it to her. It’s the least he owes her, after everything.

He nods reluctantly.

She smiles faintly. “Thank you. Now can you please sit down before you fall?”

“I’m not going to fall.” He scoffs.

“Do you want me to let go?” she asks, cocking one eyebrow.

“Have I mentioned you’re my favourite sister and I am so very sorry for that time I gave you a buzz cut?”

She rolls her eyes at him and turns them around, helping him to hobble back to the bed where the others are gathered close together, watching quietly, almost hesitantly. Maybe uncomfortable to be watching the twins’ reunion. He doesn’t particularly mind –they’re about to find out everything about him anyways. Lance notices that Coran is being oddly quiet, and when he looks over he sees Coran is standing by the pod he just got out of, frowning down at his tablet. Lance wonders what it could be that has him looking so worried.

Pidge is the first to speak. “Not that I was trying to eavesdrop on you –” she was totally trying to eavesdrop on them. “But are you going to throw another dagger at me Allie?”

Lance turns an astounded look on her. “What the heck? Allie?”

Allie is distinctly uncomfortable as she shuffles her feet awkwardly. “In my defence, I had no idea how I got to space of all places. And then no one was telling me where you were, so…”

“So you threw a dagger at my friends?” he exclaims.

She glares at him. “If you think I don’t know about that time you threatened my boyfriend with an arrow, think again.”

He pouts. “Magnus is such a tattle-tale. But fine, point.”

“Thank you.”

“You threatened someone with an arrow?” Hunk repeats, staring at Lance in absolute stunned shock.

“That doesn’t sound…pleasant.” Shiro adds with a wary look at Lance.

“That sounds more dangerous than unpleasant,” Allura corrects, looking at Lance as if she’s seeing someone else.

His shoulders lift in defence. “I had to make sure he wouldn’t hurt her.”

“Is that a common thing for brothers to do to their sister’s partners?”  Allura asks curiously.

Shiro immediately declares, “Absolutely not,” at the same time as Lance says, “Definitely,” while Pidge says, “That’s overboard.”

Allura just stares at them in confusion. Poor Altean. So befuddled by confusing human customs.

Lance glares at Pidge in utter betrayal. “It’s _not_ overboard.” Especially considering Magnus, Allie’s boyfriend, was exactly like Allie is now –not entirely human. Not a Witch, either.

Honestly, Lance could have shot Magnus at point-blank range and Magnus would have been totally fine (relatively).

“I still doubt that was necessary,” Hunk mumbles. “You can be a bit extra, Lance.”

“I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t.” Lance returns with a cheeky grin.

“Yeah but,” Pidge gives Allie a sidelong glance. “I seriously think she can take care of herself.”

The smile Allie shoots her at that can only be described as evil as fuck. Even he has to admit that Pidge is more than right about that.

Lance peers at Allie. “Wait –not that I’m not glad you’re here, but… _how_ are you here? It’s not like there’s an express ticket to get here.”

“Oh, yeah,” she reaches up and pulls out her necklace from under her sweater. “No one ever told us these can teleport us to each other, but, well. That’s what happened. I guess.” She peers at her necklace. “I’m not entirely sure, but that’s probably it”.

Lance stares at her pendant, a perfect mimic of his own, but in silver. Then he looks up at her again. “So…” he nervously glances around at the others. “So you guys know…?”

“We don’t know anything.” Keith answers, speaking up for the first time since Lance stumbled out of the healing pod. Something strange unfurls in Lance’s chest at the sound of his voice, but with a mental shake of the head, he focuses back on the vaguely irritated scowl on Keith’s face as he continues, “She wouldn’t tell us anything until we got you back.”

“Oh.”

He’s weirdly both grateful and not about that. He’s glad that Allie didn’t talk about him when he wasn’t here, but he also kind of wishes she got everything out already, purely out of the selfish desire to not relive it all. The thought of what ‘everything’ is has him focusing his attention on Allie again with a worried frown.

“How…” he trails off for a moment. “How is everyone? Back home.”

Allie smiles sadly. “They’re okay. Everyone’s still okay.” She hesitates. “Mattie and Andrea miss you a lot. Mattie stole your Justice League blanket. And Andrea’s sleeping in your room now.”

Lance tries not to let how forlorn he feels at that show on his face. He’s infinitely glad that he gets to see Allie again, but that only reminds him of everyone left back home. His Mami and Papa, his impish brother Mattie, always willing to play some prank with his twin siblings, and little Andrea being the voice of reason at such a young age, even though she’d join in on the games, anyways.

“What about Mami and Papa?”

Allie hesitates just long enough for him to know it’s not going to be so good. “They’re…trying to deal. We’ve all been hoping you weren’t dead, but it’s been hard.”

He frowns. “How?”

He doesn’t say, _How is Mami dealing?_

He doesn’t say, _How is Papa holding himself up?_

But he doesn’t need to say it. Allie already knows.

“Papa’s always with the Council now. He only stops working to sleep, or when Mami forces him to. Mami,” she chuckles shakily. “She absolutely refuses to think you’re dead. She said she’d know if you were. Guess she was right, huh?”

“Guess so,” he maunders, dropping his head to stare at his limp hands, discomfited at the thought of how many times he’s been close to death. Mami was barely functional after Alex died. He doesn’t want to think about what would happen if he does die out here. If he has to put Mami through grieving for a second son.

“Allie?” Pidge speaks up in an uncharacteristically quiet voice, so much more than any of them are used to from her. Lance looks up to see her staring at Allie with suspiciously bright eyes behind the round lenses of her glasses. “What’s the Garrison saying about our disappearance? What did they tell our families?”

“The Garrison?” Allura asks. “Is that the institution you were all in before arriving at Arus?”

Lance, Hunk, and Pidge all nod as one. It would almost be comical if not for the sombre mood.

“Shiro and Keith too,” Pidge adds.

“I was one of the instructors, Keith was a cadet like these three.” Shiro clarifies, gesturing at the trio. The ‘before he got kicked out’ is unspoken, but there. Keith doesn’t say anything, seemingly content to just watch them quietly from the side-lines. It makes Lance wonder what’s going through the red boy’s head.

“I see,” Allura nods. “I understand none of you had the opportunity to tell anyone anything.”

“Yeah.” Allie turns to Pidge with an unflinching gaze, a sort of understanding in the way she looks at her. “They’re saying you all died.” She glances at Hunk. “Your moms are actually suing the Garrison because they can’t provide proof or even a good enough reason for why you’d all be dead under their supervision.”

Hunk’s smile is wobbly but proud, and sad, at the mention of his moms. “Yeah, that sounds like them.”

Pidge frowns. “So none of our parents actually believe we’re dead?” she asks hopefully.

Lance knows she’s probably thinking about her mother, left alone on Earth while her husband and children are light-years way in space –only she doesn’t even know where they are.

Allie nods. “Your mom came to visit us, actually, a little while after you disappeared.” At Pidge’s confused look, she adds, “She wanted to know if our parents wanted to be part of the lawsuit. They didn’t, but she and Mami talk a lot. They’re friends, I think.”

Pidge seems relieved at that news. At least her mother isn’t _totally_ alone, even with her family mysteriously disappearing without a trace, a fact the Garrison is trying to cover up.

Shitty Garrison.

Lance glances at Keith as Allie talks. Keith is staring fixedly at the floor, looking all the more like he’s bodily trying to protect himself from them all, shoulders hunched and arms crossed over his chest, like that will ward off any blows to him. It almost looks like he’s trying to become smaller, like he doesn’t want anyone to notice him.

But Lance notices.

“All right,” Shiro says. “Once you get something to eat, you can go on to your room and res –”

“No.”

Shiro –and everyone else –looks just as surprised at the blunt refusal as Lance feels. He hadn’t meant for it to come out so harshly like that; he hadn’t meant to say anything at all. It’s just that when Shiro was about to say ‘rest’ and he thought about sleeping, he knew, he _knows_ he won’t be able to. It was a rare night when he could make it through the Castle’s night-time hours without waking up in a gasping, shivering, sweating mess, before. Now?

Now he’s scared. He’s scared to try lying down on his bed and closing his eyes and _seeing all that red leaking out of him as his skin splits open like broken clay crashing to the ground let us out let us out let us_

“No…?” Shiro echoes, frowning in confusion.

“Lance, the healing pod has healed you, but you still do need to rest.” Allura says, and he wonders if she realizes her confused face is mimicking Shiro’s almost perfectly.

“Yeah,” Hunk adds. “I mean, I haven’t been in a pod yet,” it’s not weird that Lance hates the ‘yet’ part of that, right? He doesn’t want Hunk going in a pod, ever, because it means something bad had to happen to get him in one in the first place. He hates how Hunk so automatically adds the ‘yet’ there, hates that the danger in their lives is so accepted a fact that it’s normal to consider they’ll all end up in a healing pod at some point. “But you’re usually knocked out for like, hours, or even a day or two afterwards.”

“Uh,” he flounders for a second, having absolutely no clue what the hell he’s supposed to say.

What, the truth? _Yeah, I don’t want to sleep because I’m pretty sure those thoughts and pictures in my head that I keep shoving away into a dark lonely corner are going to come the fuck out and bite me in the ass if I close my eyes and if I’m alone._

Hell. No.

Lance glances at Allie, pleadingly, and she looks back at him, almost helplessly, like she doesn’t know what she should say to help. Looking at her, though, gives him an idea, and he latches on to it.

“I just, uh, thought we’d…talk…about…stuff.”

The puzzlement on Shiro’s smooths out, his whole demeanour softening a little more. “It’s all right, Lance. We –all of us –can wait until you’re ready to talk, no matter how long it takes. We’re not forcing you to.”

The unspoken ‘we learned our lesson with your Seal’ lingers heavy in the air.

“I know,” Lance bobs his head in a nervous nod, fingers twitching with the need to play with the currently-not-here hem of his jacket. “I know that. And thanks –for that. I just –I’d rather get it out now, y’know? I don’t feel like sitting on it.”

“Are you certain?” Allura presses concernedly, brows crinkled. “You only just got out of the pod. You should eat to replenish your energy, and rest up properly after your –ordeal.”

That’s certainly a diplomatic way to put it. But Lance doesn’t want to rest. Rest means sleep. Sleep means dreams.

Dreams means nightmares. Memories. Nightmares. Memories.

“I’m sure, I’m sure. I mean, I kinda am hungry, but I can just do the whole resting up later.”

The three adults don’t look (and Hunk, and Allie looks kind of torn between agreeing with them or siding with Lance) at all convinced, and Lance is genuinely terrified that they’ll keep pushing this (because Hunk’s right. When Lance stumbles out of a pod, he crashes for hours or days and doesn’t resurface unless Hunk cooks something other than food goo). But just as Shiro’s about to voice his concerns with a supporting nod from Allura, Pidge speaks up, and Lance very nearly throws himself at her to hug the life out of her for being a lifesaver.

“You’re all seriously overestimating my patience.” She grumbles. “If Lance says he’s cool, then I say we listen to him. I, for one, do not mind learning about Lance’s Men In Black hidden life.”

Keith frowns in (adorable) confusion. “That’s aliens, Pidge.”

“We already established that aliens are real just by existing on this ship with these two,” she gestures vaguely at Allura and Coran. “But just take context and switch it up with magic and a plethora of terms those two,” this time she waves a hand at Lance and Allie. “Have thrown at each other like tennis balls, and you get me.”

Keith simply shrugs with a nod.

It is at that moment that the dying whale in his stomach decides to make itself known. Everyone just sort of freezes at the low grumbling that echoes like a clap of thunder in the sudden quiet of the med-bay. Even Coran turns to the small group with large eyes, moustache quivering. Lance can’t tell if it’s from amusement or horror.

“Well.” He says. “That is certainly a very loud digestive organ you’ve got there, Lance.”

Yeah, Lance still can’t tell if Coran finds the fact funny or dreadful. He can’t even deny it when he wraps his arms around his stomach, pouting at the others as they muffle their laughs. Even Keith’s lips are twitching around a hesitant smile.

“Ha ha, laugh it up.” He grouches. “Those pods don’t come with three meals a day.”

Hunk grins at that, clapping a hand on Lance’s shoulder, measuring his strength so that he doesn’t end up knocking Lance right off the table (this has happened. It wasn’t fun).

“Come on, buddy. How’d you feel about almost more-than-a-little gooey garlic knots? I’m still trying to get the measurements right so it actually _looks_ like garlic knots, but the taste is pretty much identical, and really good, if I do say so myself.” He says, beaming at Lance proudly.

Lance puts a hand to his heart and swoons, fluttering his eyes like a dame. Gods but he misses Hunk’s cooking. Even if it only looks marginally different to their normal diet of food good. “My hero.”

He just barely manages to smother the quiet whispers at the edge of his mind under the sounds of his friends all clamouring for some of Hunk’s food, with Allie asking what the hell Hunk means by gooey garlic knots (somebody needs to educate her on not being picky about space food).

He doesn’t notice Keith watching him closely, waiting.

 

* * *

 

 

Lance only realizes what’s wrong with his magic, why he can’t feel it _at all,_ when he goes to his room –thankfully on his own, having mustered enough strength to get there without anyone tagging along –to change out of the med-bay suit and into his own clothes. Technically, he’s not exactly on his own, since Hunk and Allie accompanied him. They both hovered over him as if he was about to keel over any second despite Coran giving him the all-clear after a medical scan, enough so that Lance had to send Allie off ahead of them just to feel a little less smothered.

Hunk…absolutely refused to let Lance walk around alone. When Hunk stands firm on something, he doesn’t budge one bit (especially considering Coran mandated someone be with Lance until his malnourishment is dealt with. That was an expected and unpleasant not-surprise).

When he steps inside his room, for a second all he can do is just stare. Everything is right where he left it before rushing to Blue (gods, _Blue._ He needs to go to her at some point, and just –just sit with her, and apologize, because he can still feel the sorrow underlying the waves of relief and happiness she sends him, refreshingly cool against his still slightly muddled thoughts).

It’s…it’s weird, seeing everything just as it had been, more or less. The random memorabilia he’s picked up from the planets they’ve been to still clutter his desk and in the spaces on the bookshelf he found down in the Castle’s storage, only holding a couple of books because he’d rather not risk his life learning Altean the way Pidge did.

He figures that the reason his jacket is on the bed instead of on the floor is because Allie was here. His necklace sits more neatly on the desk than the way he threw it there after foolishly deciding not to wear it to Ladene. When he sees the necklace, he crosses the room quickly and snatches it up, looping it around his neck and closing his hand in a fist around the pendant, pressing it close to his heart. Allie’s magic in the pendant pulses with familiarity at his touch, and he smiles faintly. He just hopes he hasn’t gone too long without it for it to stop working. He’s more than a little stunned that the pendants are what brought Allie all the way into space.

(He doesn’t think about how she’ll get back to Earth, if she wants to, when there’s nothing there strong enough to pull her back. Gods, what must their parents be thinking? With both of them gone, and that war still going strong if that look in Allie’s eyes and the fact that she’s got her daggers tucked into her sleeves are anything to go by, what could they think is the reason both children are gone?)

_A single clawed finger taps at the inside of his elbow, ignoring the way he wriggles and thrashes against the table and growls at it like an animal, warning, warning, get the fuck away from –_

Lance jolts back, muscles locking as he stumbles. His eyes are blown wide as he spins around on the heel of his foot, eyes picking up and dismissing every non-threatening item in the room, watching the shadows in the corners of the dark room and waiting for something to happen, something to leap out at him and sink its claws into him. When nothing of the sort happens, when his heart stops beating like a runaway train and his breathing returns to something resembling normal, Lance forces himself to ease down.

“No estoy allí, no estoy allí,” he whispers, summoning a smile to his face to force himself to try and _feel_ the smile. His voice echoes and bounces too loud on the walls. “Estoy aquí, estoy aquí. No estoy allí, no estoy allí, estoy aquí, estoy aquí.”

The mantra isn’t helping as much as it used to. Quiznack.

He backs up to the wall and puts two fingers on the touchpad controls, sliding them up and narrowing his eyes as the brightness of the lights in his room grow until not a single shadow remains hidden. He stares at the room for a moment longer before venturing further in, cautiously, like a robber in a stranger’s house than in the room he’s slept in for almost more than a year now.

As he strips out of the med-bay suit and pulls on his jeans, he passes by the open doorway to his bathroom, the mirror easily seen through the gap. Something yellow catches his eye as he passes by the mirror to go to the closet to get a shirt. He pauses, backtracks, and enters the bathroom, frowning as he comes to stand in front of the mirror.

He looks like shit.

That’s the first thing he notices. The shadows under his eyes have almost hollowed out, his skin so pale it’s like someone slathered white powder all over him. The bright blue of his eyes that he’s always prided in are dark, now, heavy with something he can’t quite identify. He’s lost weight, too –not so much that he’s a walking skeleton, but enough that when he breathes in, even just a bit, he can see his ribs.

It’s when he twists to the side, wincing at how bony his hips are, that he sees it.

For a moment, he can’t believe what he’s seeing. The scars on his back are there, unable to be completely wiped away by the healing pods, cracked lines a few shades lighter than his skin –but that’s not what he focuses on. He’s gathered up enough scars over the years to easily dismiss these ones now.

The glowing yellow rune staining the left side of his ribcage isn’t immediately recognizable, but he knows by sight alone that it’s a bandrún, a ligature of two –holy fuck is that three? –runes. He traces a disbelieving finger over it, watching as it thrums with familiar magic at his touch. He tips his head right to left, turning his body round as he tries to decipher the individual runes, trying to remember what they might mean.

Hagalaz. Then Isa is on top of it, and Laguz.

Wait. Wait wait wait. Hagalaz, Isa, Laguz. No _._

Oh, no, no, no. No, no, _no._

 _No_ hell _no._

With a disbelieving hand outstretched in front of him, Lance closes his eyes and envisions a mug, just like the one he always used back home, with the little chip on the rim from when he’d gotten too excited when one of his tíos came to visit. He’s done this a couple of times since coming to space. When the homesickness gets especially bad, he creates things from home. His favourite mug. His Justice League blanket. Sometimes another pair of jeans, other clothes. Things he knows like the back of his hand. What he creates is never the real thing, just copies, but it’s close enough to ease the longing for home, at least for a little while.

But now? Nothing.

Absolutely fucking _nothing._

_What the –_

His eyes widen with awful recognition, lips twisting in anger, proper fucking _anger_ when the realization of what the rune is and why he can’t feel his magic strikes him like lightning. Without another glance he whirls around and stalks to the closet, pulling out one of the shirts inside and putting it on before he yanks his arms through his jacket and storms out of his room.

“Lance?” Hunk pushes himself off from leaning on the wall and easily catches up to Lance’s long-legged stride. He hesitates when seeing the thunderous expression on Lance’s face before venturing gently, “Are you okay?”

 _Fucking_ “Peachy,” he grumbles out.

“You don’t look okay.” When Lance shoots a venomous glare at Hunk, too far gone in his ire to consider that hey, this is Hunk, your best friend, Hunk actually lifts his hands up with a guilty look. “I mean, you look…mad. Like, really mad. Like, I-haven’t-seen-you-this-angry-before mad.”

“It’s not you, buddy, don’t worry,” his tone softens just enough for Hunk to know he means it. “I’ll be fine.”

Hunk, wisely, doesn’t say anything further after giving Lance a long, searching look. He looks like he wants to say something more, but he doesn’t, and Lance doesn’t think any more on the nervous light in Hunk’s eye as they make their way to the dining room. Maybe he can just feel the waves of anger rolling off of Lance’s form despite how frail Lance still feels, how easily he feels he’ll shatter if he so much as bends the wrong way.

When they make it to the dining room, Lance shoves the doors open and storms in, ignoring Hunk calling out to him in confusion. The others are already seated around in their places at the table; a single spot is saved for Lance, between Keith and Shiro, while Pidge sits on Shiro’s other side, Allie on Pidge’s side, and Allura and Coran following that. They all jump when Lance stalks to the table and slams his hands on it, standing opposite Allie as he fixes her with a glare.

“Take it off.”

She doesn’t even pretend not to know what he’s talking about. She lifts her chin and meets his glare unwaveringly. “No.”

“Allie,” he says lowly. “Take it _off.”_

“No.” She returns bluntly.

He loves his sister. He does. But _what the fuck._

“Allie!”

“No lo haré!” she yells, her chair screeching on the floor as she shoves it back and puts her hands on the table, leaning forward and meeting him eye-for-eye, matching his anger with her own.

Golden sparks fizz in little flickers of light around her hair, her magic crackling like a cloak around her. Touching one of those sparks is enough to get a little electric shock that will be felt for a long time after. A cold wind that shouldn’t be possible in the temperature-controlled Castle blows around Lance, ruffling his hair as he glares at Allie. Mist forms between them from his breath, but he doesn’t feel the cold as something painful like in the pod. Instead, with Blue rumbling her support in his mind, he feels the wash of ice in his veins as something comforting –doubly so when Allie’s eyes widen at the touch of chill in the air between them.

(See, this is why Mami complains about how much of a headache it was raising twins with magic. One child with magic is hard enough. Two? Three? A _nightmare._ A lot of the scrapes on the wooden floors and chips in the doors and faint scorch marks on the walls in their family home back in Cuba are thanks to their fights. That scar on Allie’s eyebrow? A fistfight between the twins that involved more psychokinesis and teleportation than should sanely be wielded by two angry twelve year olds.)

(Lance feels like he got the short end of that straw. At least she looks badass with it. He came out of the fight with a split lip that soon healed. He doesn’t even remember what the fight was about.)

And just like that, between one blink and the next, the cold that swirls around Lance as if he’s engulfed in a cloud of snow is abruptly cut off. He literally _feels_ it, in his chest, the sudden gaping pit that opens up and swallows the cold, the _magic,_ closing up and leaving him bereft. He has to grip the table hard enough for his knuckles to go white just to keep himself upright as the full-force of the _empty_ echoes in him. When he looks at Allie, she’s –she’s fucking _smug_ about it, feeling it too, but not so sharply as he does.

“No lo puedo creer.” He shoves himself away from her, glowering hatefully. “Allie, take the goddamn rune off!”

“You got in this whole mess because of magic,” she retorts, utterly unapologetic. “Because you don’t know how to pace yourself without burning out.”

 _Fucking hell,_ “I can!”

“Really?” she retorts snidely. “Is that what you were doing when you _broke your Seal_ on your _nineteenth_ birthday? You _know_ what that means and you _still did it.”_

His grimaces, knowing she’s right about that at least, but refusing to admit it. “You can’t keep this on me forever.”

“I know.” She replies calmly, fire in her eyes belying that composure. “But it will hold until you are completely healed.”

“Uh, what are you two talking about?” Pidge cuts in loudly, startling Lance as he glances around and sees that the others are all watching him and Allie with wide eyes. They don’t look afraid, exactly, but more than a little wary of the almost tangible energy between the two.

“If you’re going to start fighting, please just don’t.” Shiro puts, standing firm beside Lance (when did he move?) and giving both him and Allie a stern look. Allie actually backs down a little at that. Oh, the powers of the Space Dad Voice. Who needs magic when you’ve got that. “We’ve all had enough fighting. Lance, take it easy, okay? What’s wrong?”

Allie gives him a searching look, waiting to see what he’ll say. With an irritant glower at her, he turns to Shiro and bites out, “She’s bound my magic. I can’t even _touch_ it until she takes the spell off.”

Lance catches the look of bewilderment on Keith’s face at that, quickly masked when he sees Lance looking at him. Lance is about to ask about it when he sees Pidge’s eyes widen, ever-present curiosity burning in her eyes. “Wait, you can do that?”

“Don’t sound too pleased about it,” he grumbles as he leans back from the table and crosses his arms. He glances at Allie just in time to catch the surprise on her face before it flits away.

“But why would you do that?” Hunk asks, glancing nervously between Lance and Allie as if they’ll start hurling magic at each other from the level of tension between the two. “I mean, that can’t be easy, right?”

“It’s like walking around with an amputated leg.” Lance says, glaring at Allie because _for fuck’s sake,_ he knows how to handle his own magic. He adds bitterly, “So _thanks_ for that.”

Allie, to her credit, looks mildly regrettable at how he describes it, looking away from Lance as she sits back down and fixes a glare at the table. Even though he doesn’t want to, he feels his petulance soften at the sight, at the remembrance of how tired and sad she’d looked in the med-bay.

Without saying a word, he leans forward and flicks Allie’s ear before she can react, hard enough to hurt a little. She jerks back at the touch, eyes narrowing to slits as her upper lip curls and her ears fold back to press against her head, hands coming up to cover them protectively. He smirks grimly at that; Fae are incredibly sensitive about who touches their ears.

“What the hell?” she snaps. “You know that’s rude as hell.”

He raises an eyebrow, copying her earlier snide look, and lifts a chastising finger. “Binding my magic without my permission was rude.”

“It’s only until you replenish your magic.” She mutters, as close to an apology as he’s going to get. She leans back so that she’s out of reach of any more ear-flicks. She pins a flaming glare at him, daring him to fight her on this. “That quintessence that was inside you? It felt like a _curse_ , Lance. Curses _kill._ Let your magic get back to full strength so that whatever that quintessence did to you won’t kill _you_.”

Lance’s lips pull back over his teeth in a silent snarl, anger on his face even as his mind shrivels at the reminder. “I can handle it.”

She scowls. “If you think I’m going to sit by and watch you get tortured _again_ , then you’ve got another thing coming.”

There it is.

Out in the open.

Band-Aid ripped the fuck off.

Training wheels sent burning down the road.

Warning sign knocked down with a few words.

What no one’s mentioned for fear of what will happen if they do.

Lance immediately tenses at her words, a surge of some kind of primal fear kicking through him as hazy pictures flash through his mind’s eye. Purple lights flash over brown fabric, white masks over yellow yellow yellow glowing slits and voices slithering over his skin like snakes slick with oil wriggling over his body, tightening around his wrists and ankles and biting into his arm, filling his veins with acid that _burns_ it burns it stop stop _stop stopstopstopst_ –

“..ance…L…nce…Lance?”

Lance slams back into reality, instinctively dipping his shoulder and jerking away from Shiro’s touch as if he’s been branded by fire. The way his skin crawls at the touch, he might as well have been. The others are on their feet, varying degrees of anger and remorse and –and _pity_ in their eyes. They’re talking, but their voices are muffled, as if they’re speaking through cloth. Allie looks like she’s about to launch over the table to get to him, and there’s regret in her eyes, only just realizing how insensitive her words are.

He blinks rapidly, confusion muddying his brain as he takes another step back, gripping the table with a white-knuckled hand to keep himself upright as he waves off their concern. Keith –when the fuck did Keith get so close? –is right by his side, not touching him, but hid body is coiled tight, like he’s about to spring to action.

“Lance?” Coran asks, concerned standing in front of him, just far enough to give Lance space. “Are you all right, my boy?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he manages to keep his tone level, and even shoots a self-confident smile at him, them, even as he takes another step back from him and Keith, and Shiro standing beside Keith, all watching, _watching_. “Just, uh, went out of it a bit.”

“Are you sure?” Shiro asks. He doesn’t try to reach out to Lance again, not standing so close as he had been. Lance figures that out of everyone here, he probably realizes Lance needs the space. “We don’t have to do this right now if you’re not ready. We can just eat and you can go relax afterward.”

“Yeah,” Hunk continues. “You’ve been through a lot.”

Allura nods, adding, “We can always wait, Lance. There’s no need to rush this.”

Pidge and Keith remain silent. One glance at the two of them shows that they both agree and disagree with the others, staying quiet and waiting for Lance’s answer. Lance is sorely tempted to take the offer, but he knows that if he keeps putting this off, he’ll never get around to explaining jack shit.

“No, it’s cool, I’m fine.” He reassures them. _I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine._ He pats his almost concave stomach. “Just hungry is all.”

Allie opens her mouth, clearly about to object, but Lance shoots her a warning look. She hesitates, narrowing her eyes at him. He shakes his head, imperceptibly, but enough to keep her from pushing. Her lips tic, but she nods a little, just enough to let him know she got the message.

Sighing heavily, he pinches the bridge of his nose. He doesn’t like it, he _hates_ it, but he knows from the stubborn just of her jaw that she’s not going to be budging any time soon. If he’s being honest about it, he can understand why. His magical track record as of late wouldn’t exactly inspire glowing reviews. He’s sure if Mami were here, she’d thwack him upside the head for how foolish he’s been, and Papa would ground him for life.

Especially considering he was captured by the Galra because of it. But at least he got the rest of the team out. Seeing them all here, safe and unharmed, he knows that at least it wasn’t for nothing.

“A little warning would have been nice, Allie.” He grumbles, tightening his grip on the table, as much to keep himself from wobbling as to keep himself from punching something. He hates this emptiness where his magic should be –he _hates_ it. “When did you even put the rune on me?”

“Before you went into that alien coffin thing.” She replies, gaze dropping down to his hand before snapping back up.

Coran splutters indignantly at that, unable to keep his silence any longer. “What do you mean, alien coffin? There’s nothing wrong with the healing pods’ aesthetic appearance. Nothing at all!”

Lance’s lips twitch up. Hey, hey, he can work with this. “You’ve got to admit, they do look a little like alien coffins. I bet even Dracula would think so.”

Coran gapes. “They do not!”

“Do too.” Pidge puts in. She completely fails to smother her giggles behind her hand at this point.

Coran turns an offended look on Pidge. “How dare you!”

Hunk chuckles in amusement. “Honestly they do. I mean, they open and close kind of like an automated casket, plus, you can’t get out of one once you’re inside. Although I don’t think Dracula would be majorly comfortable in one.”

“That is a gruesome thought.” Lance puts in with a mocking shudder as he remembers being stuck in one when Sendak took over the Castle. “And they are so not comfortable. Why don’t they come with cushions? Or like, a pillow? I could do without the kink in my neck, y’know.” He tips his head to the side, rolling his shoulders and making a show of working out the non-existent crick.

Coran spins around and pins an outraged expression on his face. “You’re all on healing pod cleaning duty, effective immediately! Except Lance, but you’ll get your chance, don’t worry.” Coran wags a finger at Allie. “And don’t think you’re getting out of it, young lady. _All_ of you will help me in cleaning _all_ the pods. Except you, Shiro, you’re the only sensible one of this lot.”

From the look on Shiro’s face at that, he agrees more with them than Coran. But he’s smarter –he doesn’t say anything, just shrugs, taking the win for what it is as everyone else groans and tries to wiggle out of cleaning the pods because that –that is a _nasty_ chore.

“Come now, Coran,” Allura waves her hand at him to calm him down. “I’m sure they don’t mean it.”

Lance’s eyes grow comically large. “But I do, Princess! You want me to start walking around like this?”

He lifts his arms straight up in front of him and angles his head back, making exaggerated zombie groans and robotically walking towards Shiro like he’s about to try and chew his brains, tongue lolling out and his eyes going flat like he’s an actual zombie. Shiro smiles his antics, his eyes crinkling pleasantly when Allura snorts (prettily, which is a significant feat, like _goddamn_ ), and Hunk laughs heartily at him, even as Pidge makes some comment that Lance completely doesn’t hear when he sees Keith.

Because Keith usually groans or rolls his eyes when Lance is acting stupid like this. But now? Now Keith cracks a smile. A legitimate _smile._ It’s small, barely seen as he watches them, but it is there. Lance is quite sure he’s not imagining things when his heart skips a beat at the sight of the tiny, adorable smile. Holy fuck, he _needs_ to get Keith to smile more often. It is a crime that it’s not seen as often as it needs to be.

As soon as Keith sees Lance looking at him, he quickly schools his expression to blandness, but it’s too late. Lance grins at him and thinks, _I caught you, mullet-man._

Allie watches them all laugh both at and with Lance, her own smile barely there. She smirks at Lance when their eyes meet, and he wonders at why she looks at them all like she’s finally figured out a puzzle that’s whole picture has escaped her capture for too long. Allie’s a hell of a lot more perceptive than he is, when her judgement isn’t clouded by her own emotions. It’s almost scary.

He’s still pissed at Allie for binding his magic, especially without his consent (not that he would have given it even if she’d asked), but he can’t stay mad at her for long. Never could. Especially considering that she’s in space with him when she’s supposed to be on Earth.

Once they all stop laughing, Hunk shepherds Lance to his seat between him and Keith while Shiro takes his own beside Allura and opposite Coran, Keith wordlessly going to sit beside Lance. Hunk instructs everyone to stay put and not say a word (read: break out into another almost-fight that could quite possibly level the entire room because no one quite knows how they’re supposed to handle a magical fight, even if it’s in Allie’s favour what with Lance’s magic being bound now) or leave until he comes back with the meal he spent a good long while perfecting to taste like Lance’s absolute favourite garlic knots, even though it probably doesn’t look like garlic knots.

(Lance already has an idea that they will look very gooey, but hey, if they taste like his favourite meal, he’s not complaining. Not when the other option is bland, tasteless, ridiculously chewy food goo.)

Allie looks confused at this, and Pidge tells her, “When you’re in space, you appreciate how food tastes and not what it looks like. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”

A strange look passes over Allie’s eyes at that, but she just nods and sits back in her chair, waiting.

The silence that falls over them as they all wait is uncomfortable, to say the least. Now that no one’s laughing (translation: everyone’s attention being deflected from the mild shakes in his hands and the intense discomfort he feels at being unable to feel his magic), the magnitude of what’s happened, what they survived, and what’s about to happen hits them. Lance nervously fidgets with the hem of his jacket, unable to lift his head and meet anyone’s eyes because he doesn’t –he doesn’t really know what he’ll do if he does.

Lance talks. He talks a lot. He always has. When he’s nervous, he chatters like a squirrel. When he’s scared, he babbles like an angry bird. When he’s happy, he shames Shakespeare with his own renditions of monologues. Mami used to joke that he came out of the womb talking everyone’s ear off. He uses words as a veritable armour, to keep people from prying under the surface of the mask he puts on for them to see, to lift people’s spirits, even if it’s just by annoying the holy hell out of them.

But now? Now, he’s just –he’s quite tired, actually. Sleeping for the next century sounds good, but every time he closes his eyes, even just to blink, images sneak in behind the blackness of his eyelids, teasing him, and he knows that even if he tries to sleep, it won’t be for long.

He’s dreading when everyone goes to sleep and he has to pretend he will, too.

Quiznack, he had nightmares before, and he already wasn’t sleeping much then. What is he going to do now?

“Hey,” Keith mumbles, low enough that no one hears, drawing Lance out of his spiralling thoughts.

He brings his head up from staring at his hands, only just realizing that the others have started talking to each other. He blinks at Keith. “Yeah?”

“You…okay?”

At Lance’s blank look, Keith nods at his hands.

Lance quickly puts his hands between his knees and presses them together to keep the shaking from sight. He turns on a smile that’s just a tad bit dimmer than his usual hundred-watt smile and whispers back, “Just fine, mullet-man.”

Instead of rolling his eyes or huffing in irritation at the nickname, Keith watches Lance closely for a beat too long for Lance’s comfort. Lance feels the force of Keith’s unerring gaze like it is a tangible weight pressing down on him, stripping him of his numerous shields and digging around for the broken, lonely core of him.

“Okay, so there’s twin elephants in the room, are we gonna talk about them?”

Ah, Pidge. What a lovely ice breaker. At least it got Keith’s attention off him.

“Elephant?” Allura echoes.

“Big mammal. Very big. Long nose. Ridiculously small tail that is completely disproportionate to the rest of its body.”

Allie snorts at Pidge’s blunt explanation as Coran says, “But there is no animal here? Except for you weirdly shaped specimens of the human genus.”

“Weirdly shaped –”

“It’s a figure of speech, Coran, don’t worry about it.” Shiro puts in before Pidge can say anything more. “I suggest we wait for Hunk to come back and let Lance eat something before anything else.” He looks at Lance. “How does that sound?”

Is –oh, wait. He’s actually asking Lance. That’s nice of him. “Uh, yeah. Sounds good.”

More chance to procrastinate, but hey, you won’t see him complaining about it. Remember that saying? Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth –even if it’s only going to last a little while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Estúpido – stupid  
> Hermana – big sister  
> No estoy allí, no estoy allí. Estoy aquí, estoy aquí - I'm not there, I'm not there. I’m here, I’m here.  
> Tíos – me butchering the Spanish for uncle, ‘tío’, and turning it into some kinda Spanglish pass-off. I’m sorry.  
> No lo haré – I won’t  
> No lo puedo creer – this is bullshit
> 
> Thanks to Mattressama for providing the Spanish! 
> 
> Please don’t take the runes thing seriously. That was me and Google doing a lot of shady shit. Not Pidge-hacking-the-damn-deep-web level shady, but more somewhere along the mystical-side-of-the-internet-you-didn’t-know-exists level.
> 
> The vodka incident with Lance and Allie? That actually happened to my best friend (she always tells me about her drinking experiences because she’s two years older than me and has consumed alcohol and knows I want to know what it feels like –for writer purposes –without having to drink it myself [because I have an addictive personality and it’s better for me to just stay away from all that]. She’s a very good hooman). She let me use her experience in the story only because I promised I wouldn’t laugh like a demented witch on crack every time I think about it. The difference between the twins and Cherie is that she was never caught. At all.
> 
> KUDOS (lol) TO THOSE WHO RECOGNIZED THAT SUPERNATURAL REFERENCE. I just threw in that demon-deal-hellhound reference for literally no reason other than because I can. *shrug*
> 
> As always, comments are warmly appreciated! Thank you so much for reading!
> 
> [Wattpad](https://www.wattpad.com/user/azurehyn) || [Tumblr](https://www.azurehyn.tumblr.com)
> 
> p.s., there is a reason behind Keith's own reaction to Lance coming out of the pod.


	11. i know your secrets (i know your lies)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith is confused. Hunk struggles to understand. Allura and Coran are aliens and are chill with not understanding at all. Shiro just needs a break to process it all. Keep Pidge away from magical creatures at all costs. Lance’s life has never not been in danger, and Allie is hiding something.
> 
> “Lance can’t imagine how much of a shock this is to them. Really, he genuinely can’t imagine it. He’s lived in this reality for his entire life –before space, before the Garrison and seeing how other kids lived normal lives, this was all he knew. Monsters from horror stories that share the streets he walked on, demons cloaked in shadows that hunted in the night, flighty, maybe-a-little-megalomaniacal, definitely-more-than-a-little-narcissistic Fae that turned their noses up at Witches for being human.
> 
> This is his world. And now they know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me at the beginning: what the actualy flippity goddamn fuck am i getting into with devilman crybaby
> 
> me at the end, listening to From Here To Eternity on loop, in tears:...this anime was not supposed to do this to me.
> 
> Yes, I changed my name from azurehyn to xeah. azurehyn is going to remain the penname I use for my original stories, and xeah is for fanfics. Don’t judge me, I have a confused mind
> 
> Chapter title is from I Know Your Secrets by Tommee Profitt ft. Liv Ash
> 
> This chapter is dedicated to [ Wittran ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Wittran/pseuds/Wittran) because their wonderful comment on the last chapter somehow managed to pull me out of temp writer’s block for this. THANK YOU :)
> 
> p.s., would you guys believe me if I say my chapters usually start out at around 3-5k, and then I keep going back and adding to it and fleshing it out until it turns into 14-17k monstrosities because that is what happens

Lance isn’t able to get as much of Hunk’s genuinely delicious garlic goo knots down as he wants to (it vaguely looks like garlic knots, but not at the same time, and the taste is a little off, but it’s better than anything Lance was expecting), but Hunk doesn’t seem to mind at all. That makes Lance guilty, that he couldn’t eat more. Almost like he could read his mind, Hunk reassured him it was totally fine, and that he’d save the garlic knots (protect them from Pidge) until Lance felt like he could eat more. In fact, he looks like he expects Lance not to be able to eat more than he manages to.

(This may have something to do with Coran’s telling them of Lance’s malnourishment, which is an unwanted yet expected surprise, and more than explains why he’s cold and weak as hell and it’s _annoying_ dammit.)

(He and Allie may or may not get into a small battle of putting their food on the other’s plate because Allie doesn’t like the whole malnourishment thing and Lance _does not like_ how thin his sister has become since the last time he saw her. The two have always been on the leaner side [no one speaks of their five-year-old selves who discovered chocolate was the secret to immortality], but this –this is skeletal. This isn’t his sister, who doesn’t hold back when she eats, at all, ever.)

(Shiro’s the first one to notice them doing this. He doesn’t reprimand them for it, contrary to what Lance thought he’d do. When Lance looks up after pulling his plate far enough out of Allie’s long-armed reach [ _when did she turn into freaking Slender man??_ ], he catches Shiro watching the twins with an amused, fond smile.)

He was waiting for it, so he’s not at all surprised when he feels a hand touch his elbow as they’re all leaving the dining room and getting to the lounge, everyone kind of huddling around Lance like some sort of protective barrier. He glances back to see it’s Allie, her lips pressed tight and a guarded look on her face as she leans closer and whispers, “Can we talk? Alone?”

Lance nods instantly, slowing to a halt beside her. The others notice quickly and turn to the twins with varying degrees of confusion.

“Is something wrong?” Hunk asks worriedly, eyes tracking Lance as if he’s looking for some huge bleeding gash somewhere on his person.

Lance shakes his head. “Nah, buddy. I just –I need to talk to my sister for a bit. If that’s okay?” he adds, glancing at Shiro and Allura as Coran walks on ahead of them to do…something.

(Coran always has that air of being busy, even when he’s not seemingly doing anything. It’s a conundrum even _Pidge_ hasn’t been able to figure out.)

“Of course,” Allura replies easily. She smiles reassuringly at them both as Shiro begins herding the younger Paladins down the short length of the hall remaining to the lounge, turning to follow them. “Take as much time as you need. The circumstances are quite strange,” she says. “And it’s not every day you are reunited with your family. I’m sure you have a lot to catch up on.”

“Thanks, Princess,” Lance says gratefully, trying to ignore the twinge of guilt he feels at getting to be with his sister when everyone Allura’s ever known, barring Coran, is dead. “We’ll be there in a minute.”

Allura nods and gives them a little wave as she turns the final corner and disappears with the others. Lance waits for a few more seconds (a habit picked up from Pidge’s inclination to randomly pop up out of nowhere when he thinks he’s alone. She now has ample blackmail material thanks to his reactions), then turns to face Allie. She’s staring after where Allura just walked off, an oddly curious look on her face.

“Hey,” she says, slipping into Spanish now that there’s no one else around. “Are Shiro and Allura dating? Because they look perfect for each other. I mean that literally. And they already have the space parental mannerisms down to notch.”

Lance feels a metal band ease from around his throat as he eases into Spanish as well, the sound of their musical, lilting mother tongue rolling off his tongue, as easy as breathing. He never fully realizes just how much he misses it until he gets to speak it again, eliciting a longing in his heart to hear his Mami’s soft voice, his Papa’s booming laugh.

“We’re actually betting on when they’ll get together.” He grins.

“Who’s winning?”

Lance sighs in mock defeat. “Pidge. Her bet’s on a couple more weeks.”

Allie smirks knowingly. “I’d be scared of her if she wasn’t so small.”

Lance widens his eyes comically at that, flailing his arms in exaggerated indignation. “Dude, I’m scared of her _because_ she’s so tiny! It’s the small ones you’ve gotta watch out for.”

“Oh my god,” Allie groans, lifting and dragging her hands down her face in horror. “Andy’s always using that against us. You remember when she told Mami it was you who broke her favourite salad bowl?”

Lance almost visibly flinches at the dreadful memory. Mami…Mami is fucking _terrifying_ when she’s angry. Zarkon has nothing on an angry Rosa McClain. At least Mami’s beautiful. Zarkon’s a literal purple glowing-eyed genocidal rat. That’s stupid tall, but still a rat. Who the hell’s scared of a rat?

(Allie.)

(Allie is scared of rats.)

He puts a hand to his chest and covers his eyes with the back of his other hand, turning his face away from Allie as he says dramatically, “Speak not of the things I have seen thanks to that demented banshee, Allie, speak not.” He drops his hands with a crooked smile. “You know why Mami believed her over me?”

Allie sniggers. “‘But I’m too small to reach the table, Mami, how could it be me?’” she says, imitating Andrea’s voice. Even making her eyes go big and innocent, an almost perfect rendition of how diabolical Andrea was when she shifted the blame of that broken salad bowl to Lance.

“That evil child,” he laughs ruefully, shaking his head. “Why’d she pick me? I was stuck cleaning up bathroom after _all_ of you for freaking weeks after that. Totally disproportionate punishment to crime ratio, and I didn’t even _do_ it.”

Allie gives him a dull look. “If Andrea tried that on me, she knows I’d have made her pay for it.”

When Lance remembers how Allie once almost burned one of Andrea’s dolls for doing some petty little thing, he can understand why he was the scapegoat instead of her. He can posture and threaten his little siblings all he wants, but when it comes to actually following through…he’s more likely to end up giving each of them a piggy back ride up and down the shore of the beach because –they’re just very manipulative little kids, okay? They’re good at the whole innocent-wide-eyes-little-child shtick. Lance has had years to build an armour against those little devils and he still falls for it every time.

(He just barely manages to keep from lifting his hand to his chest, trying to press into where his heart lies, where it clenches into a tiny ball because he _misses_ them, he _misses_ his family so much that it’s almost a physical pain, like razor-sharp needles stabbing into the bleeding organ.)

Lance glares at Allie, but there’s no heat in it. “I still haven’t gotten over you for burning my D.Gray-Man volume.”

She rolls her eyes. “You deserved it. You gave me a buzz cut! Two days before school started! When I was _asleep!”_

Okay, yes, he had it coming, but Allie had it coming too. While their prank wars could get out of hand, Lance had felt the new hairdo (or lack thereof) was justified in light of the fact that Allie used her illusory magic to make him look like he had a third eye that absolutely _terrified_ little Mattie. And if he’s a little salty about that still, can you blame him? It’s no fun when you wake up to your little brother shrieking his head off because he came in to wake you up and got scared out of his mind when three eyes blinked at him.

They share a quiet laugh for a few moments, eyes bright with playful memories of their family, of home. The light dims in Allie’s eyes first, and Lance almost _feels_ her mood grow solemn.

“How are you?” she asks quietly, watching him closely.

It is a battle to keep from wincing at her question, to keep his face perfectly neutral as he shrugs as nonchalantly as he can manage. “I’ve been through worse. Always came bouncing back. It’s gonna take a lot more than that to break me.”

She gives him a shrewd look. “You’re doing it again.”

He gulps. “Doing what?”

“Pretending what happened to you is nothing. You did it after Alex died.”

“Alex i –was more important.” He wasn’t going to let anyone focus on him when they needed to take care of Alex after he died, to make sure the funeral ceremony would let his spirit go where it needed to.

“You’re doing it now.”

“I…” he ducks his head a little under Allie’s withering gaze. “I’m not –I’m not saying it’s nothing. I just don’t –I don’t want to make this a big deal, Allie.”

She frowns. “Lance, it is a big deal. It’s a _huge_ fucking deal. Our pendants,” she gestures between the two, at the black leather cords around both their necks, their pendants tucked safely from view under their clothes. “Literally pulled me into _space_ because you were in trouble. The voices came out! _Again!”_

_letusoutletusoutletusoutletusout_

“Don’t remember it.” Didn’thappendidnt’happendidnt’happendidnt’happendidnt’happendidnt’happen

“Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” she snipes. She jabs her finger at his chest, much gentler than her voice, but enough that Lance feels the faintest quiver in it before she curls her hand into a fist and crosses her arms. “Pretending it didn’t isn’t going to help anyone, least of all you. I’m not going to push you to talk about it –” at least she knows that won’t get her anywhere. When Lance doesn’t want to talk, you’re better off trying to convince a statue to animate itself and do the Macarena. “–but at least promise me that you _will_ go to someone when you need to, okay?”

He shifts his gaze to stare studiously at the floor.

 _“Lance.”_ She presses. “All I’m asking is that you promise to find me, or anyone here, when you need to. I’ve been here for barely a week and I can tell they all care about you. They _love_ you.” He glances up sharply at that, but she doesn’t give him time to speak before she adds, “You’ve suffered so much, but you weren’t alone in it, you know. They had to watch what happened to you, and I’m pretty sure none of them are okay after that.”

He remains silent, his eyes falling back to stare at a spot two inches from Allie’s left boot, going over her words.

“You don’t like going to others, fine. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for them. Promise me that when things get bad, you’ll find me, or you’ll go to them, and show them that you care about them as much as they do you.” He watches her boots come closer before she leans forward a bit and bends so that she meets his eyes without him having to look up. “Can you do that for me, hermanito?”

His lips twitch faintly. If he doesn’t say something, she’ll just keep on pressing this, and all he wants is to forget about it. All of it. He just wants to forget, and Allie won’t let him if he doesn’t at least try to reach her olive branch.

“Fine.”

She sighs in poorly-concealed relief (like, she doesn’t even try to hide it). He lifts his head as she straightens, her arms still crossed over her chest. She looks like she wants to say more, but for once, his sister bites her tongue and keeps her silence –though, he’s not entirely sure if the alternative of her staring at him like she’s a hawk and he a mouse is any better to whatever she wants to add. His mind flips through about a hundred and two different things she could want to say to him, to ask him, but he honestly can’t decide which one she’ll go for, if any. After a long moment in which she searches his face for some answer he’s not sure of, she finally speaks.

“So. I’m not going back, am I?”

He deflates instantly at the question, shoulders slumping. He knew this was coming. Doesn’t make it any easier to swallow the bitter pill, even if he’s had to do it so many times every time he gets so homesick that all he can do for hours is lie on his bed and stare at the ceiling and try not to cry until his heart falls out of his mouth.

“I don’t –I don’t know.” He mumbles. “I don’t think so. And even if you’re the best at teleporting, we’re way too far for you to even try that, and we can’t risk the Galra tracking us back to Earth.”

She nods slowly, sadly. “I know. Blue –your Lion –when I got here, she gave me a crash course of what’s happened since you went missing. Since you got out here.” She chuckles wryly. “Quite the adventure you’ve got yourself.”

He blinks. Blue rumbles pleasantly in his mind, and it almost sounds apologetic. Like she’s sorry that she let someone other than Lance close enough for that.

_Blink and you miss it, but Lance doesn’t miss what his eyes fall on when he opens them. Storm clouds replace amber sand dunes, and a tuft of white hair falls over the scarred skin on a human nose._

_Shiro._

_Shiro, looking at him with such contempt and hatred that Lance’s insides turn to molten stone, heating and liquefying his guts._

_Shiro cocks his head. “Why else do you think Blue isn’t talking to you?”_

_No, no,_ Lance clenches his hands to fists at his sides, digging his nails into his palms, forcing himself to remember the relief on the _real_ Shiro’s face and the gentle touch of his hand when he ruffled Lance’s hair when he came out of the pod, the amused and fond smile when he watched Lance and Allie bicker over who eats more. _That’s_ the real Shiro. Not the one in his head, the one from then, the one from –the one from –

Lance just barely manages to hide a wince of pain when his nails bite hard enough to cut into his palm. The pain yanks him back to the present. He smiles lopsidedly at Allie. “Really?”

Something flickers in her eyes. She nods. “She recognized me from all the memories you’ve shown her of me, of us back home. She’s…it’s so strange, Lance.” Allie shakes her head in wonder. “Those Lions, they’re machines, but they’re –they’re _alive._ I can literally _feel_ it, and I’m not even connected to any of them the way you guys are. I bet even without magic I’d still feel their life-force.”

Inside he’s brimming with pride at his connection to Blue, a sentiment echoed in Blue’s purrs. “Alien tech, man. Specifically, Altean tech. It’s out of this world.”

“I will drop-kick you if you try another pun on me again. I haven’t recovered from the lettuce one.”

“Oh come on, that was a good one!”

A flat glare.

“Fine, fine,” he waves his hands in surrender, still grinning cheekily at her. “But you’ve got to admit, that was a good one.”

Allie lifts her foot slightly. Lance yelps, backing away, even as the sound morphs into chuckles that slowly fade out as he watches Allie’s faint smirk drip away like melting wax.

“Are you going to tell them everything?” she asks quietly. At his nod, she adds, _“Absolutely_ everything?”

“Absolutely everything.” He says firmly, internally wincing at what ‘everything’ entails.

“Even what the Beast did to you?”

A pause. “Even that.”

“The voices too? Everyone saw what they did in the arena –” she gives him an apologetic look when he visibly winces at that. “And I told them a little –”

“What did you say?” he asks sharply, immediately thinking of the strange look in Keith’s eye, the way everyone’s sort of been hovering over him but at the same time doing it warily, like they’re…like they’re afraid to.

_You look…mad. Like, really mad. Like, I-haven’t-seen-you-this-angry-before mad._

The voices are not here now. He’s coiled tight with tension, aware of every little sound around him, listening inside him, waiting for the voices to come, and he knows they’re not here right now, for whatever reason. But what if there’s a part of them left behind? This is the second time he’s lost complete control, the second time they’ve had the reigns and used his body as their own. Even when they don’t control him, even when all he can do is lie in bed and stare blankly at the ceiling as he screams at them in his mind to stay back, they’re influence lingers. Usually it’s depression, emptiness sitting in his stomach and expanding out to his heart. Anxiety, too, feeding his insecurities, driving him to sharp blades that he doesn’t always know how to not dig deep enough with.

But the last time he fought them back after they’d stolen his body for a long enough time…last time this happened, he changed. He got quiet. He watched everyone around him, the way they tiptoed, the way they were scared to set him off. He sneered at their pathetic attempts to protect him before catching himself on that thought, something he never would have thought before.

He became harder. His heart turned to stone, forgetting the warmth of his family comforting him. It took him weeks to bounce back. To remember what his own laugh sounded like. To recognize himself in the mirror. It’s a good sign that he can joke and smile and laugh now (no matter how shaky), because it means that the voices weren’t _him_ long enough to leave month-long lasting damage. But he would be stupid to think they didn’t damage _something_ in him.

_You look…mad. Like, really mad. Like, I-haven’t-seen-you-this-angry-before mad._

_What did I look like?_ He wonders. _What did they look like when they were me?_

“Not everything,” Allie answers. “I just told them about the voices. I didn’t tell them where they’re from, or why you hear them. I, uh,” here she fidgets a little, shuffling from foot to foot. “I mentioned that you went missing last time the voices took over. But nothing more, I swear.”

He doesn’t relax. Not really. His bones tingle with nervous energy, like there are ants running around right under his skin, itching and making him want to move, to bounce around, to –to _run._ But run from what? There’s nothing to run from now. He’s in the Castle. He’s with his sister. His teammates are right down the hall. They saved him from that hell, from the blackness of oblivion and the wash of blood red of the voices sweeping in and claiming him, from the screams and the cries and the tears and the _pain_ the _pain that burns it burns please stop stop make it stop make it_

“That’s it?” he asks, internally flinching at how cold he sounds. Detached. He mentally shakes his head and asks again, injecting some measure of upbeat emotion to his voice, “They don’t know any more? Kinda don’t want to be blindsided here.”

“They saw me kill my first demon. In your memory.” She answers slowly. “They saw you training with Fergus in the Order. And they saw Mami and Papa telling you to go to the Garrison. And…they saw the…they saw Alex. After.”

Lance pales at that, but he says nothing. Allie watches him closely, as if waiting for him to crack, to break, to shatter into a million pieces. Then, “That’s it. They saw nothing more. I don’t think they’ll force you to tell them if you’re not ready.”

“They need to know, Allie,” he murmurs, wishing he could take her assurances and run away with it, but knowing he can’t. He hunches his shoulders down a little more, huddling into his jacket, his beloved jacket, Alex’s jacket. “What the hell kind of teammate am I if I can’t do this, at least?” he shifts his footing slightly, gut coiling tight, tight, tight. “How can I ask them to trust me with their lives if I can’t trust them with who I am?”

She gives him a long, searching look. “You’ve changed a lot since coming up here,” she remarks. “You’ve grown up.”

He shrugs, playing for indifference. “It’s war. You don’t get to be a kid in war.”

“That’s why Mami and Papa wanted you to go to the Garrison.” She says bluntly, her whole demeanour hardening in that way that scares a lot of people, but only makes Lance feel irritated that she would try to use it on him. Allie’s good at intimidating people, but he’s having none of that. “They wanted you to be a kid who gets to live out his dreams. This,” she gestures around them, at the empty hall in an Altean castleship. “They didn’t want you to get out of one war only to trade it for another.”

_Sorry what._

“I didn’t ask for this, Allie.”

“Yet you’re still here,” she retorts harshly.

For one second, all he can do is gape at her hard, unflinching tone, at her grim face. Then, “What the fuck? You think I’m here because it’s _fun_ to be stuck in space in this war?”

She doesn’t answer, only glaring at him. He’s seen that face well enough to know what it means.

_The fuck with this._

“No, you know what, screw this –” he cuts himself and reaches forward. He doesn’t miss the way her eyes widen infinitesimally at the surprise move, but he’s still grateful she plays ball and lets him grab her hand and tug him forward. If she wanted to, she could break his fingers for that.

(She did it to this one middle-aged entitled white guy that thought getting handsy with the ‘pretty latina lady’ was a good idea and would actually get some booty thanks to it. Having your pinkie broken isn’t fun. Pinkies are small, but when they break it _hurts._ )

“Where are we going?” she asks, only pulling a little on her hands to get him to let go, and matching her steps to his pace as they make their way down the hall.

He shoots her a dark look and simply mutters, “Just follow me.”

When they enter the common room, all conversation dies out almost immediately when the rest of the team notice the thunderous look on Lance’s face. He ignores them all and stalks forward to stand in the middle of the room, spinning on his heel and folding his arms across his chest as he eyes Allie coming to a halt on the outer edge of the couches, as if she’s afraid to break the circle and join the rest. He stares at her, and she returns his gaze stolidly, not budging. He just barely manages to keep from sighing heavily in frustration at her antics before turning to face Coran.

“Coran?” he asks.

Coran turns from watching Allie with a consternated look on his face, and cocks his head to the side in puzzlement at Lance’s angry face. “Yes, Lance?”

“Can you pull up a star-map here?”

“Of course I can, my boy.” Coran replies. Even though he’s still obviously confused, he pulls out his tablet and hovers his ready fingers over it. “Anywhere in particular?”

“Everywhere.” Lance answers, ignoring the bewildered looks on everyone’s faces, including Allie –except Keith. He’s got that poker face going, but there’s seems to be an almost knowing look in his eye. Lance wonders if he’s been subject to Allie’s bullheadedness already. “I want to see the entire universe. Please.”

“All righty, just a tick.” Coran inputs something into his tablet.

Not more than three seconds later, silver lines burst out in the room, cutting through Lance and Allie’s still standing bodies and racing across the room, streaking up the walls and over the high ceiling. Spinning baubles of condensed and colourful lights are spread out in seemingly randomly dotted arrangements across the star-map, but Lance has looked at it long enough to recognize the different constellations whose names he doesn’t know. Unlike the map on the bridge, this one isn’t colour-coded to match the reds and oranges of distress beacons, or the purples of the Galra army movements they’ve been table to get a track on. This is just the universe. All of it, concentrated into a visible map of light, numbers and letters in both Altean and English next to swirling star-systems, planets, and galaxies.

(He tries not to think about how one of those planets is Ladene.)

He could have taken Allie to the bridge to see this. It would have been easier. He’d have been able to activate the map himself there, because he knows how to, Coran and Allura showed him how. He has done it enough times to do it now with his eyes closed and both hands tied behind his back. Here he doesn’t know how to, so he has to ask Coran to do it for him.

He knows he could have taken Allie to the bridge instead. He could have, but he didn’t. He didn’t, because he wants her to see the extent of how far this war reaches, and who it is fighting in it. He wants her to see that the war back home isn’t the only one where lives are lost every day, and that he isn’t in this one for the sake of it, for ‘fun’, to have a pass at being a hero.

He wants her to look at this map in the presence of the those fighting to protect the people in all those worlds, all those galaxies. He wants her to see Pidge, so small but so full of bright-eyed intelligence and a burning need to do what she knows is right and what she knows she has to.

He wants her to see Hunk, more aware of the dangers fraught in their line of work than most, always afraid, but more fearful of losing his friends and his family to the war. He wants Allie to see Shiro, the scarred warrior who knows the enemy better than most and still stays to protect those he’s taken under his wing, those who saved him, those he sees as needing to protect from the horrors of this war as best he can because he doesn’t want them to live through what he has.

He wants her to see Allura and Coran, the two last Alteans alive, who lost their entire planet, everyone they knew and loved, and ten thousand years to this godforsaken war. He wants her to see Keith, the loner who looks like he’d be happier on his own than stuck saddled to them, yet he still stays, even when he could go, even when they found out he is half Galra and was scared he’d be rejected because of it, even when he could have gone with the Blade but stayed here, with them.

He wants – _needs –_ Allie to see.

But before he can say a word, she speaks up again, still in Spanish. Something dark and annoyed flits through him at that, at how she’s still trying to keep the rest of the team in the dark with the knowledge that they can’t understand her with their mother tongue.

He squashes that dark irritation before it can bloom to a flower of rage, like he knows it might if he doesn’t watch himself. He has to be careful, now.

Careful, now. Never let slip how shaky his control really is.

“Do you have any idea what the last year has been like?” she asks.

Lance glances around the confusion on the other’s faces as they look from Allie to Lance. Even despite his irritation with it, a strong part of him is glad they don’t understand.

“Do you, Lance?” Allie repeats, finally taking that last step in to the circle of couches as she comes to stand a foot from him. “Mami and Papa have no clue what happened to you – _no one_ knows. Even the Order couldn’t find you! We thought the Be –” her eyes harden to flint. “We thought the Beast got to you, that he’d already _killed_ you and just wasn’t saying anything because that’s kind of his fucking thing!”

She sees the way he flinches at mention of the Beast. And she keeps on going, even when Shiro calls out to them, trying to calm them down, even when Hunk asks what’s wrong, tries to intervene, even when Allura asks them to take a step back and relax instead of fighting, _again_. It’s like they’re stuck in this little bubble, and Lance has the needle and he’s trying so hard to poke the bubble and make it burst around Allie so she can _see_ why he’s here.

Even when Allie has a needle of her own, poking at his bubble, trying to make him see what she’s been going through since he disappeared.

“We couldn’t contact you, we couldn’t even tell if you were alive or not.” She presses on. “Fergus tried to be optimistic about it because, hey, maybe it wasn’t all that bad!” the sarcasm dripping from her is enough to whip up some bitter-tasting ice cream, he’ll give her that. “Yeah, we couldn’t reach you, but that doesn’t always mean it’s a bad thing, even though _it is._ Because no, you’re _not_ safe, you’re getting –you’re getting _hurt,_ because no, again, _you are not safe,_ you just traded in one evil megalomaniac for another one trying to take over the fucking universe!”

“I didn’t ask for this to happen, Allie!”

“Hell no,” she warns harshly. “If you give me some bullshit like ‘I was called to duty’, I swear to the gods –”

He snaps at that.

“Yes!” he screams, cutting her off with the vehemence of his tone, the anger burning in his eyes at how –at how she’s fucking _trivializing_ everything he’s done here, everything he is doing and has had to go through while out here. “That's exactly it! You think I _want_ to fight a war when I ran away to the Garrison to get out of ours?”

He runs his shaking hands through his hair, tugging roughly at the strands as he steps back from her, as if he has to physically move away from her before he does something he regrets. “Fuck, that's not it at all. I was chosen for this war, yeah, against my will, but _I'm_ choosing to stay and fight, and you know why, Allie?” he gestures widely out the map, to the silver light the strands and circles represent of the stars beyond.

“Because out there, there's _billions_ of lives depending on it. They’re being squashed down and trampled over by Zarkon, who's just a bigger, meaner version of the Beast, and he's got bigger, meaner plans for the entire universe he controls. I'm fighting for those who can't fight for themselves against him, and I'm doing it so they don't have to go through what I did when I had to watch the Beast kill Alex because of _me_. I'm doing it so they have a chance at a life I want because they're not strong enough to do it themselves, but _I am_. _I_ am, with _them.”_ He gestures wildly at the rest of his teammates, frozen in their seats, staring at the twins. “I’m fighting so that Zarkon doesn't come after Earth next, so that we don't have to deal not only with the Beast, but Zarkon either taking over our entire planet or just obliterating it out of existence simply because he _can_ , simply because it's our _home_. _”_

He steps closer to her, just enough that there is no way she can escape what he says. “So next time you think I ran off to be a hero all on my own, that I was selfish enough to just abandon my family,” here his voice cracks, enough to be heard, but he ploughs on, he drives forward because he needs her to _see._ “Think about what Mami said to us after Alex died.” He glowers at her, uncaring for the guilty look on her face, the light of understanding, _finally,_ in her eyes as she avoids his gaze and focuses on a spinning nebula on the star-map. “What did she say?”

She doesn’t answer, only clenching her jaw, lips thinning to a near invisible line.

“What did she say about _heroes_ , Allie!”

A muscle in her jaw ticks. She grits out, “Heroes don’t make it home.”

Just like that.

It’s like all the anger fuelling him to yell at his sister like this, at her refusal to see the importance of what he’s doing here, drains out of him all in one go. He steps away from her, fighting to keep his shaking knees from sending him to the floor, to keep himself from just crumpling into a heap and crying because he _hates_ fighting with Allie. In the moment, all he knows is knocking her down, all he knows is proving himself better, proving himself _right,_ but when all is said and done, he just –he hates fighting with her. It _exhausts_ him, because they’re not supposed to fight. Not like this.

He loves his sister. He does. It’s just that sometimes she can be so infuriatingly obstinate, her mind so stuck on one track that she doesn’t see anything else.

“Heroes don't make it home.” He sighs, running his hand through his hair again, everything in him mellowing when the fuel of anger leaves his emotions wrung dry. “Heroes don't make it back home, and yet here I am, trying to keep our world safe, and others, when I know I probably won't get to go back home again.”

A blanket of silence falls over them. It reigns in the words yet unspoken, the thoughts unbidden, emotions broiling under the surface of a lake still undisturbed. Lance and Allie stare at each other, Lance breathing hard from the exertion of shouting at Allie, from just waking up from the pod and being stupid enough to think he could just power through this whole explanation of his goddamn bleak as fuck past, the rest of the team all staring at the twins with their mouths hanging open and utterly confused and having no clue what the hell is happening.

Lance almost wishes he could be like them. He’d prefer to be on that end of this confrontation than the one he’s on now, standing opposite his sister, trying to make her understand that he’s not here because it’s better than home, because it’s _better,_ but because he’s fighting and doing what he knows is the right thing.

He needs her to see.

Tiredly, Lance scrubs a hand over his face, pulling in a deep breath and dragging his hand down his face before letting his arm dangle at his side again. “Do you see, Allie?” he asks softly. “I’m not –I _can’t_ deny what the Beast has done. To me, to our family, to every one of our people. But this fight is bigger than me, and it’s bigger than Witches, and humanity. This fight is about the _entire universe._ Zarkon isn’t going to stop. He hasn’t for over ten thousand years. If I –if _we_ don’t stop him, he’s going to get to Earth eventually. Do you think we can fight a war on two fronts, even with humans doing everything they can to keep from being enslaved?”

Allie doesn’t answer immediately. She continues to stare at the star-map, blinking rapidly at it, focusing her eyes on one point and ignoring all else.

His heart nearly crumbles to ash with sorrow when she does speak.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs. “I’m just so angry. I thought that wherever you were, you’d at least be safe. Then I’m pulled out here and I see you –I see you –you’re just, you’re not as safe as I hoped you would be. You’re supposed to be safe, Lance. I can’t –I can’t lose anyone anymore, I just –I _can’t.”_

He frowns at her, stepping closer, seeing the light in her eyes for what it is; tears.

Allie doesn’t cry unless she’s done everything she possibly can not to and still fails to keep the tears at bay. Last time he saw her cry, properly cry, was after Alex died. Before that it was their cousin, Sophia, again thanks to the Beast. After Alex died, he’d watched Allie build impenetrable walls around herself so that no one except her family could get close enough to hurt her like that, intentionally or not.

It takes someone _dying_ for Allie to let herself go like that, to actually cry.

“What are you talking about?” he asks gently. He doesn’t reach out to touch her, not yet. He needs her to say this of her own free will, not have it forced out of her like plucked teeth. “What do you mean?”

Allie opens and closes her mouth once, twice, three times, the rapid blinking of her eyes just barely holding back the tears.

“Not yet,” she manages, so quiet, and Lance has to step closer just to make out what she’s saying. “Not –not yet, Lance. I can’t talk about it now.”

He frowns. Dear gods, what the hell is it? What happened while he was gone that Allie can’t even _talk_ about it? What did he leave his sister to deal with, alone, while he’s been out here? She said their family is okay, Mami and Papa are okay, Mattie and Andrea are okay. So what happened? Why is she acting like this?

“Allie –”

“I will,” she cuts him off quickly, shooting him a pained, _pleading_ look. “I promise I will tell you. But just give me time, okay? Please?”

He doesn’t want to. His curiosity burns like a living fire inside him, eating away at him, simmering in his belly, _raging_ to know.

But still, slowly, reluctantly, he nods.

Because Allie doesn’t cry. And if she’s on the verge of it now, and needs _time_ to tell him what’s wrong…the fire quells a little at that. It wants to know, but there’s a fear tinging the curiosity grey, dulling it, quietening it, because he’s scared to find out, too.

“Bien,” he murmurs quietly.

Conflicted relief plays out over her face like a war between emotions for a brief moment before she smiles gratefully at him. It’s a watery smile. It utterly fails to soothe. “Gracias, hermanito.”

He simply grunts, lips twitching as he glances behind her, to the star map still swirling lazily around the two. He can feel the eyes of the team on them, and he knows it’s only a matter of time before they speak up, but for now he just focuses on breathing in, deep, until he can feel the air touch the bottom of his lungs, before he lets his breath out. Something whispers across his mind, and his spine straightens a little, closing his eyes for a moment and focusing intently within himself. It whispers again, and his gut roils nauseatingly at the familiarity of it.

The voices.

They’re not back yet, not completely. As it fades away, the tension in him loosens in increments, but he’s hyperaware of everything now. He opens his eyes to see Allie gathering herself up, returning to smooth professionalism after her near breakdown. He can feel the stares of the team on his back. He can almost hear their breathing in the deathly silence of the room.

He doesn’t let himself settle and the knowledge that they’re all here, all safe. It’s only a matter of time before the voices return.

_You look…mad. Like, really mad. Like, I-haven’t-seen-you-this-angry-before mad._

Pidge, of course, is the one to break the silence that lingers over them all like a palpable miasma.

“Uh, is everything okay?” she asks uncertainly. “I mean, obviously not, but…are you guys…okay? You’re kind of freaking us out here. Last time you two fought, which was literally maybe twenty minutes ago, Lance almost started a blizzard.”

A bit of an exaggeration, but Lance figures that, given enough time and practice, he might actually be able to make a blizzard one day. Baby steps first, though. God didn’t create the world in one day, if that’s your thing. He doubts any other omnipotent deity did, either.

Lance turns to them, summoning a smile to his face, fake as hell, but still bright as hellfire, because it’s his specialty. He’ll be damned if he’s going to let himself turn into broody Keith 2.0 turned up to three hundred and depress everyone with his shit. “Everything’s fine, Pidgeon. We were just talking.”

“Talking.” She squints at him. “I don’t know Spanish, but I have a brother, and I know what you two were doing was not talking.”

“Yeah,” Hunk adds. “You guys were _yelling_ at each other. Is it always like this between you two?”

Lance lifts a single brow. “You mean fighting? All siblings do that.”

“He means being chill one second and then screaming at each other the next.” Pidge clarifies.

“Hugging one second and then at each other’s throats the next?” Hunk adds (not so) helpfully.

Lance scoffs as he walks over to the empty spot between Hunk and Keith, plopping himself down, snuggling into Hunk’s warmth and saying, “Buddy, that was nothing. Where do you think Allie got that scar on her eyebrow?” he asks, shooting Allie a teasing smirk as she rolls her eyes heavily at him and goes to sit on Pidge’s side, still tense as a captured bird ready to spring to flight, but the fact that he didn’t have to prompt her to go and sit somewhere is a good sign.

Allura just gapes at the twins silently while Shiro stares with wide eyes at Lance. Poor Space Dad is way out of his depth with magical twins on board. “So you’re always like this? This…”

“Scary?” Pidge offers.

Keith says, “Violent?”

“Short-tempered?” Hunk asks.

“Raging like a dour yaplak?”

Everyone turns to Coran with blank looks, who puts his hands up in defence. “What? I was just going with the flow.”

“What’s a –” Allie is cut off from finishing the question when Pidge quickly slaps her hand over Allie’s mouth to shut her up. Allie shoots a confused look at Pidge, a very obvious, _What are you doing?_ in her wide eyes.

Pidge leans in and fake-whispers, “Do not ask about any animal Coran mentions. Ever. You’ll be trapped for three hours straight.”

“Last person to make that mistake was me,” Hunk groans, face screwed up with the memory of it. Lance chuckles and pats his arm as he leans on it, smiling almost lazily at everyone around him.

(He is trying very hard not to think about how his foot is right next to Keith’s thigh. He’s trying very hard. Oh so very hard that he’s totally not staring at his foot like it’s a separate part of him when Keith shifts just a little that he’s almost touching the strange foot. Nope. Not at all.)

“Hey!” Coran exclaims indignantly. “I don’t appreciate you all ganging up on me, for the _second_ time this quintet. Yaplak’s happen to be incredibly fascinating and majestic creatures of old Altea. Admittedly, they were a little temperamental, and their mating calls could cause quite a ruckus –”

“Now, now,” Allura swiftly cuts in before Coran can dissolve into a lecturing spiel of whatever the hell a yaplak is. “I think history lessons can be saved for another time. Don’t you, Coran?” she asks, giving him a sweet (slightly evil) smile.

With his moustache quavering in a manner that suggests he’s still not quite ready to not teach them all about yaplak mating calls, he nods and says, “Of course, Princess.”

“Lance, Allie,” Allura turns to each of them with a somehow both stern and gentle look. “Do you wish to continue? We can wait, as we’ve said. We do need to know some things, I won’t deny it.” She doesn’t need to say it for Lance to know she’s talking about the way he reaction to Ladene’s existence in general. “But the rest is up to you. It’s your lives, and your choice.”

“I still think it’d be a good idea for you to rest before we do this,” Shiro says.

“I second that.” Hunk says, looking down at the top of Lance’s head.

Lance, who continues to stare at his foot, just grumbles incoherently. Allie doesn’t answer, simply cocking her head to the side and looking at Lance. When he feels her eyes on him he lifts his head. She raises a brow. He pouts. The second eyebrow joins the first, coupled with a dead fish-eyed look. He shoots her a disgruntled look before turning back to Allura.

“We’re ready.”

 

* * *

 

 

Keith is confused.

So confused.

Granted, he knows his experience with siblings is non-existent, at best. He’s an only child, and all he knows of siblings is what he’s seen from strangers, classmates at the Garrison who he only realized were sibs because he’d heard of it, otherwise he never would have figured it out on his own, not even with what is universally dubbed as ‘sibling bickering’. He’s never been around twins, either, so he doesn’t know anything on how they act in real life and not on TV.

(The Parent Trap is not an adequate delineation and could never have prepared him for the McClain twins.)

But Lance and Allie?

He has no clue if their fiery relationship is exactly ‘normal’ for twins. It’s like one moment they’re like the same person, unconsciously mimicking each other’s gestures (right now Keith isn’t sure if the curious way Lance tilts his head when he’s listening to someone is because it’s something Allie does, or if the exact same way Allie tilts her head when she’s paying attention to what’s being said is because it’s something Lance does) and communicating from facial expressions alone, the next they’re practically at each other’s throats, shouting at each other in Spanish, arguing until they’re hoarse. If Lance had his magic, he figures the twins could, quite literally, level the training room with one of their arguments.

(This is a scary thought. Keith likes the training room. A _lot._ )

And that’s…that’s another thing. Even to a non-Witch like him, Keith can figure that binding someone else’s magic is a huge fucking deal. Lance said it’s like having a limb amputated; if it’s that bad, he’d see something like that as being some sort of punishment. He gets where Allie is coming from (much as he can) by binding Lance’s magic until he’s at full power, but…that does nothing to put her in his good books. Not that she ever was to begin with, but still.

(Even if a part of him is intensely glad that there is no chance Lance can pull some self-sacrificing _bullshit_ like he did on Ladene with his magic. He keeps that to himself, though. He’s pretty sure Lance would shoot him if he said that. At the very least ice him. Judging by the breeze of cold that was cut off when Lance demanded Allie take some rune off, he’s guessing that however Allie did it, she might not have been able to bind off _all_ of his magic. Or maybe she did. Who knows. He certainly doesn’t.)

But the way Lance looked…

Keith likes to think he’s seen a lot of the expressions Lance makes. He knows what Lance looks like when he flirts, when he laughs a genuine laugh, when he smiles fondly at whatever crazy antics Team Punk are up to, when he’s focused intently on their training and flight drills, when he’s driven to protecting the people the Galra target and attack, when he’s so sleepy he doesn’t notice Pidge switching out his full plate of Hunk’s cooked breakfast with her mostly finished one, when –

Basically, Keith’s known Lance long enough to see a lot of the faces he makes. He’s watched him long enough to know when Lance’s smiles are real and when they’re for others’ benefit, and when Lance is angry or just very irritated because he didn’t get his daily nap. But back in the dining room, when he was facing Allie off about his magic?

Lance looked like a different person.

Keith’s never seen him look at that. He’s never seen Lance so angry –no, no, that wasn’t just anger. That was _rage._ For just a split second, it was unadulterated rage flashing in Lance’s eyes.

Keith knows next to nothing about magic –real magic –and Witches, and the entire world Lance comes from. He knows nothing of Lance’s past, nothing of what could have brought Lance to the point that he harbours voices in his head that are probably more than a little bloodthirsty. But he knows that whatever Allie did to bind Lance’s magic, it’s clearly something Witches just don’t do. It’s something that, for a split second back there, Lance looked willing to attack her for.

“What do you know?” Allie asks, drawing him out of his confusing circle of thoughts, bringing his focus back to the matter at hand and not his confusion, or the fact that Lance’s foot is right near his leg and Lance is either looking at his foot or at Keith’s leg. “What’s Lance told you so far?”

Pidge practically jumps at the chance offered, and rattles off everything they know about Witches, excitement at learning more tingeing her every word. When she’s done, Allie’s looking at Lance with a distinctly motherly yet disappointed look.

“You told them nothing.” She says bluntly. “You barely scratched the surface.”

What.

They –everything Lance has said about Witches was ‘barely scratching the surface’?

“No I didn’t!” Lance exclaims, sitting up slightly from leaning on Hunk. “I mean, yes I did! Ugh, you get me.”

“They literally know nothing, Lance.” She deadpans.

“Dropping the bomb of Witches being a thing is kind of a big deal, okay?” he grumbles. “I was taking it slow.”

“I’m inclined to agree with Lance on that,” Shiro says, leaning forward and bracing his elbows on his knees as he fixes the twins with a look. “None of us ever had a clue that Witches and magic are real, for good reason. I don’t know about you guys,” he looks at them all in turn. “But it took me a while to come to terms with the fact. If we hadn’t seen Lance’s Seal…doing what it did, I doubt I’d have believed it as quickly as I did.”

“Neither of us know much about human taxonomic group differences on Earth,” Allura adds, gesturing between herself and Coran. “But from what Lance told us, about why your people implemented the use of Seals, we can see why you’d keep yourselves separate.”

Allie hums thoughtfully at that, leaning back on the couch and crossing her arms over her chest. “Okay. Then I guess the first thing you should know is that Witches aren’t the only beings capable of magic on Earth.”

Everyone’s jaws (metaphorically) drop, though in Pidge’s case, her glasses nearly fall off her nose as she bolts upright where she sits and ogles Allie. “You’re joking.”

“Nope.” Allie pops the ‘p’. She gestures at her pointed ear. “You don’t think this is some kind of mutation, do you?”

“Actually, I kind of do –did?” Hunk says, eyes huge as saucers as they flick between Allie’s ears. “I mean, I thought it might be some kind of magical mutation or something? Like, it might be a genetic variant that affects only Witches.”

Lance snorts as he tugs Hunk back to sitting on the couch properly so he can continue using Hunk as a human pillow. “Genetic mutation, hah. Wish I could say that to the Elders’ faces.”

Keith’s brain is going to overload by the end of this. He just knows it.

“Lance,” Allie chides.

“What? You can’t tell me you don’t think they’re pompous a –”

Shiro doesn’t miss a beat. “Language.”

“-anoperineal organisms.” Lance finishes.

“Nice save,” Keith murmurs under his breath, smiling a bit when Lance turns a radiant (almost real) beam on him.

Allie sighs. “I’m not denying that they can be a bit –”

“Stuck-up?” Lance says helpfully. “Full of themselves? Purchasing permanent residence on the snobby plot of cloud nine?”

She shoots him a half-hearted glare. “I’ll shave your head. They’re still my leaders.”

Lance responds by ducking under Hunk’s arm, hiding like a child in the dark under a protective blanket. Hunk merely snickers at that, tightening his arm slightly in a little hug. Keith tries not to be jealous that that’s not his arm.

“You realize we have no clue what you’re referring to.” Allura asks, watching with an amused smile gracing her lips.

“Sorry about that,” Allie says, sitting up slightly, arms still crossed. “Basically, Witches are conduits of magic. W –they are like powerhouses for magic, storing their own magic as well as using what energy is around them. But majority of other beings possessing magic are magical creatures. Physical embodiments of magic, literally made of magic, I guess you can say.”

“And you’re one of those, right?” Pidge asks, almost bouncing in her seat. She frowns. “But –Lance is human. And you’re twins. I’m confused.”

Everyone echoes her sentiment with agreeing nods.

“Yeah, Lance is human, and I’m obviously not.” Allie affirms, glancing at her brother. “We were both born human, Witches, but I’m Fae now.”

Pidge gapes at her. Hunk is absolutely flabbergasted. Shiro looks like he’s on his way to an early grave by aneurysm. Allura and Coran are politely confused, and Keith’s basically just numb to surprises now. They’re all rolling off him. He’s taking in everything that’s being said, but he’ll just –he’ll think about it all later. Later, when Lance hasn’t just stretched his long, lean body out and draped his legs over Keith’s legs, upper body still pillowed on Hunk, but _Lance’s legs are on Keith._

He’d like to know why he can pilot a giant, sentient, mechanical cat in space with relative ease, take down Galra fighters and soldiers that come after him with relative ease, but when he’s confronted with the reality that is Lance’s legs on him, anywhere on him, his brain simply can’t compute.

Really. He’d like to know.

Wait. Wait, did Allie just –

“Did you just say you’re _Fae?”_ he asks, stunned. What does that even mean?

“Fae?” Hunk repeats, gawking. “As in Fae Folk? As in faeries? _Faeries?”_

“Cute little pixies and shit?” Pidge adds.

“Pidge.”

“Sorry,” she mutters distractedly, not looking away from Allie for even a second. Shiro just sighs heavily at her before looking at Allie for her to continue.

Allie smiles faintly. “No, Pidge. Fae, or Faerie, are probably the most frightening creatures anyone could ever encounter. “For example, if you annoy a pixie even just a little, you will never, ever find anything you look for. If you lose your car keys, say goodbye to your car.”

“Amen to that,” Lance mutters under his breath. Keith’s lips quirk in a half-smile at the derision in Lance’s voice.

“I’m sorry,” Allura speaks up, looking more confused at the Paladins’ reaction than Allie’s words. “But what is this ‘Fae’?”

“From what I can tell, perhaps a subspecies on Earth whose existence isn’t common knowledge?” Coran muses.

Allie nods. “Coran has it right, pretty much. Fae Folk are magical creatures, and most of humanity either dismiss our existence, or imagine us as something completely different to what we are.” Allie answers, sounding very much like a saner, more coherent version of Coran when he goes off on one of his lecturer’s tirades. “Witches are humans who’ve evolved and learned to tap into their dormant magical power, and use the magical energy that surrounds every living thing. Creatures of magic are already magic, _made_ from it. Some are magic simply because of their very existence, like giants, trolls, ogres –”

“Those are _real?!”_ Pidge shrieks.

Allie nods. “Yeah, but they keep mostly to themselves.”

“Plus, you can’t see them without magical sight.” Lance adds.

“They’re creatures of magic because their bodies are made up of the energy that is magic.” Allie agrees. “If you don’t have the sight, like Witches do, then you’ll never see them.”

“What about if only one of your parents is a Witch and the other is completely human?” Allura asks curiously.

“It more depends on whether or not you have any active magic in you. If you have even a little bit, you’ll be able to see our world, even if you can’t actually do any magic with it.” She answers, almost hesitantly.

“Active magic?” Pidge echoes. “What does that mean?”

“Every human has magic. Even you guys.” Lance says, smiling a little at Pidge’s obvious eagerness to learn more about this magical world living right under her nose. Shiro blinks in surprise at his words. “The only difference between Witches and humans is that your magic is dormant, and ours isn’t. Having one parent being a Witch is probably enough to activate your magic, but otherwise, humans don’t really ever wake their own magic.”

Pidge pouts. “But I want.”

Lance grins at her. “I know.”

Even though she looks like she wants to sulk about it, she still manages a small smile at Lance. Keith smirks.

“Hold on,” Hunk asks. “So, we’ve established that Fae are real, considering one is sitting right in front of us.” Lance and Allie nod at the same time. “And we’ve established that humans have magic, only it’s dormant and we can’t use it.” Another nod. “And also that other magical creatures exist.” A nod. “My question is, what about unicorns? Are unicorns real?”

Of course Hunk wants to know about that.

“What’s a unicorn?” Coran asks, flabbergasted, Allura mimicking his confusion from the furrow of her brows. Keith squints at her hair –is there a mouse hiding in it?

“Remember that picture of a horse I showed you the other da –quintet?” Pidge asks him. He nods. “Imagine that with a swirly horn in the middle of its forehead, and you’ve got a unicorn.”

“Oh, we had those on Altea!” Coran exclaims happily. “Although they had five legs instead of four, and two heads. They could also breathe fire, and their tail hairs were used for wigs quite a lot, due to having anti-gravity properties. Fantastic creatures, I say. They had very oily skin, too, not quite suited for riding, in my opinion, but excellent for lip balm.”

Allie looks horrified at that, miming everyone else’s reaction to the existence of such a thing. No one voices it thanks to Shiro’s swear jar still being a legitimate thing and none of them actually having money to put in it (Pidge’s gambling problem has wiped them all out), but they’re all thinking the same thing; _Coran what the fuck._

Except Allura. Because she’s just nodding along to what Coran says, looking oddly proud about it.

“So?” Pidge turns back to Allie. “Are unicorns real?”

“Yes, but I don’t think you’ll ever want to meet one.” Allie says, a little cautious.

“Why not?”

“Because they’ll stab you with their horns sooner than they’d give you a ride across the country,” Lance says with sarcastic cheer.

Keith can almost visualize a screen with an image of a prancing white unicorn on it shattering in his mind.

Hunk blinks down at Lance. “Um. How do you know this?”

Lance sighs dramatically. “Because once upon a time, I was like you and thought finding a unicorn would be cool.” An exaggerated pause. “I was very wrong.”

The humans present glance at each other in shock, childhood illusions of fairy-tale unicorns and rainbows broken in the span of five seconds.

Allie smirks a little at the memory, as if it’s a fond one, and not one alluding to the possibility that Lance might have once nearly gotten stabbed by a damn unicorn. “Mami was so pissed at you for running off after it.”

“In my defence, no one told me unicorns don’t like people.” Lance grumbles. “Or literally anything that isn’t a unicorn.”

“Okay, setting aside the apparent murderous tendencies of –of _unicorns,”_ Shiro says quickly, warily eyeing Allie. “What are you?”

Hunk cocks his head to the side. “You don’t look like an ogre.”

Allie rolls her eyes with a small smile at that. “Thanks, Hunk.”

“Unless you’re using that illusion magic to change your appearance and you’re actually a hideous one-eyed, green skinned, hulking giant.” Pidge points out. Allie just gives her a narrow-eyed glare that could either mean, _I can do that and I will to terrify the living daylights out of you_ or _Watch your techie babies._

“She’s an elf.” Lance murmurs. He sounds vaguely sleepy. Keith watches him from the corner of his eye as Lance subtly pinches the back of his hand and adds, “There are other creatures who’re magical because of their ability to control and manipulate energy, like Witches. Elves are one of ’em.”

Keith blinks, slowly, staring at Lance, then shifting his astounded gaze to Allie. He had guessed something along the lines, vaguely, in the back of his mind. But actually being told so bluntly the truth? It’s a little…hard to swallow. Not really, but at the same time yes? He’s always believed in things everyone else dismisses as fiction, but to be confronted with the literal reality of it sitting five feet from him? He wasn’t actually expecting to be right about thinking Allie’s some kind of occultist cryptid.

“Oh my god,” Pidge breathes, staring in poorly concealed awe at Allie. “You’re an elf. You’re a freaking elf.”

Allie humours her with a vague smile as she continues, “Elves, changelings, sirens, domovoy, those are just a couple of examples of the second type of Fae.”

“What are domovoy?” Hunk asks, stumbling a little over the name.

“Protective house spirits in Slavic folklore, usually work for Witches.” Lance tells him. “Never try to enter a Russian Witch’s house unless you have the owner’s permission.”

“What happens if you don’t?” he asks, wide-eyed.

Lance smirks. “If you like your legs, just don’t.”

Hunk visibly gulps at that.

Allie shoots Lance a stern glare. “Stop scaring him.” Lance just shrugs as she turns back to the others. “Not all Fae are as aggressively protective of their territory as domovoy are.” She reaches up and trails a finger along the outer edge of her ear briefly before dropping her hand. “I was born human, but now I’m Fae.”

For a moment, nobody can speak, everyone just struggling to comprehend with this strange new reality they’re in. Accepting that aliens are real and they’re the only ones who can defend the universe from one particularly evil purple alien fuelled by corrupt quintessence is one thing. It’s relatively easy compared to having to come to terms with the fact that there is a hidden world inside the one they’ve all grown up in, a world that’s only ever been hinted and whispered at, but never proven to be real. And then, all of a sudden they discover that one of their own teammates is from that world, grew up in it, and has a twin sister who’s not even human anymore?

It’s a lot to take in. Keith’s not sure he’s actually processing any of this, instead just listening and filing shit away to be worked through later. Preferably with his sword in hand and a level six gladiator in front of him.

“How is that possible?” Shiro breaks the silence, wonderment in his voice. “How can you be this…Fae, an _elf,_ but Lance is human? You’re twins, shouldn’t you be the same?”

Keith glances over at Lance just in time to see the look of discomfort flash across his face before he lays his head on Hunk’s arm and closes his eyes. Keith looks up to see Allie watching her brother closely for a moment before she turns her attention back to them.

“It’s a Witch thing,” she answers, looking almost as uncomfortable as Lance at saying this. “It’s complicated, but essentially, Witches are connected to three branches of magical life, and depending on their individual capabilities, can tap into one of those three more than others. There’s Witch magic, Fae magic, and Warlock magic. Witches have this thing where we can choose what type of magic, what branch of existence, basically, to continue our lives as on our sixteenth and nineteenth birthdays. We choose what magic calls to us, and I’ve always been drawn to the Fae my whole life. So on my sixteenth birthday, I Declared to be Fae.”

She makes it sounds so simple. Straight-forward, no beating around the bush, no curves along the road that deviate from the direct path.

“It’s funny how that makes sense and just doesn’t,” Hunk comments blandly.

“Story of our lives, buddy,” Lance replies, nudging him lightly. Hunk gives him a shaky smile in return, clearly still reeling at the shock of all this new information, trying to come to terms with the sudden axis-tilt the world he thought he knew has decided to take.

“But why?” Pidge asks. “I mean, what’s the point of that?”

“It’s because Witches are conduits of magic. A lot of the times we can just use magic the way we need to, and let it pass through us as we do. It’s like this.”

She waves her hands, and the gold dust of her magic crackles to life in front of them. The yellow particles coalesce into a spherical shape, like a water bottle, filled to the brim with gold. A second bottle forms beside the first, this one only half full of gold.

“With Witches, you can see it as having two stores of energy inside us. This one,” she waves her free hand at the half empty bottle. “Contains the magic we usually use.” She waves the hand controlling the illusion before them, and drafts of sparkles weave through the half empty bottle, flowing in and out, filling it up to full before draining it down to bare scraps, rinse and repeat. There is always some gold that remains in the bottle, though. The first one floats untouched by the amber drafts. “The magic that’s outside of our bodies flows in and out of us, and we use it however we need to.”

“What about the other one?” Allura asks, the lights of the golden illusory magic shining in her eyes. Keith’s never seen her look so excited like this. “That one doesn’t change?”

“No,” Lance answers, a very small smile on his face at Allura’s almost childlike giddiness at all she’s learning of human (relatively) magic. “That’s our magical reserve. With the second one our magic can be refilled constantly, but magical reserves can’t. If we use it, even just a little, we can never replace that magic.”

“If a Witch uses up their magical reserve, they die.” Allie adds with a narrow-eyed glare at her brother. “That’s why it’s only for truly desperate situations.”

_“Lance?” Keith asks. A cold fear grips his heart in an iron fist when Lance sluggishly peels his eyes open, a ribbon of red dripping down from his nose to stain his upper lip. “Lance, why are you bleeding?”_

_A tired smile cracks Lance’s lips. His voice is a hushed whisper as he murmurs, “Take care of yourself, will ya?”_

“Lance,” Coran starts doubtfully, a concerned furrow to his brow. “Did you use your magical reserve to get the others here?”

Keith immediately tenses. This is the first time anyone’s mentioned what Lance did out loud. Sure, everyone was thinking it in the med-bay, and in the dining room (Keith could literally see Pidge opening and closing her mouth repeatedly with the urge to ask Lance why he’d done what he did when they could have stuck together and _fought_ their way out, to ask why he thought he was more expendable than the others), and even here. But no one’s just come out and _said_ it.

He’s not entirely surprised that it was Coran who broke the ice with that one. He’s starting to think the Altean is playing on his supposed ignorance of Earthly customs and manners to ignore what others wouldn’t mention out of tact to find out what he wants to know.

Beside him, Lance has gotten as still as Keith, coiled up like a spring wire. After a moment’s hesitation, he shakes his head. “No. Blue helped me.”

He doesn’t say any more. Coran watches him closely for a moment before nodding slowly.

“So,” Shiro rubs his palms on his knees for a second as he leans forward slightly, bringing the conversation back to track. “What does this have to do with your, uh, Declarations?”

Allie drops her hand, and both illusions vanish. “Sometimes a Witch will be more affected by the magic that passes through their bodies, and it will start to change them. Usually the changes manifest into a clear choice for the Witch on their sixteenth or nineteenth birthdays. My magic influenced me into becoming Fae, and, well,” she gestures at her ears. “Once I formally made my choice, physical changes to my appearance started to slowly come about.”

Shiro looks at Lance. “Have you done that? This Declaration?”

Lance shakes his head. “Never felt anything, so I never Declared.”

“Wait, hold on, pause, time out.” Pidge pipes up, frowning as she looks between the twins. “You broke your Seal on your nineteenth birthday.”

Lance nods slowly.

“And this Declaring thing happens on the sixteenth and nineteenth birthdays, right?”

Again, he nods slowly.

Pidge regards him frankly. “Your magic’s been out of whack because you broke it when you were supposed to Declare, isn’t it.”

Lance’s lips twitch a little. “Yeah.”

So it wasn’t just breaking the Seal that’s been messing with Lance’s magic. Not for the first time, Keith wishes he could go straight to Xyphelia and punch Lykonark into the floor. What seriously crappy timing the man had.

“That’s why you bound his magic?” Allura asks curiously.

Allie nods. “Declarations are a big deal. Witches are incredibly sensitive at those times, and their magic is unstable. You’ve seen what breaking a Seal is like, and those two combined is almost deadly.” She looks at Lance as she says, “The bind will fall away once your magic is back to full power. Until then, you can’t use it.”

A chill twists Keith’s stomach to knots when he glances at Lance just in time to see the dark anger flash across Lance’s face, turning him into someone else for a split second before it vanishes and he closes his eyes again, leaning on Hunk again and effectively shutting down that line of conversation.

“You mentioned three branches of magic. Witch, Fae, we know now. But you also said something about Warlocks?” Allura points out. “You haven’t explained what they are.”

Keith’s pretty sure he’s not imagining things when he sees annoyance flit through Allie’s eyes.

“Warlocks are…” she trails off a little, as if she’s at a loss on how to continue.

Lance cracks open an eye to stare at her. “Warlocks are?”

Why does he sound like he’s scolding her?

Allie glares at him in vague disgruntlement.

Lance watches her for a moment longer before something in his face shutters, and still looking straight at her, he says to them, “Demons are real. I know you saw my memories –the one where Allie and I were eight years old and she killed that shadow.”

They all nod silently. Keith wonders how Lance knows that, when he’d looked unconscious then. Allie probably told him.

“It was a demon, low-level compared to others. Demons are humans who died and went to hell, and were corrupted by their punishments there, then found a way to crawl back up to the surface of the world.” He shifts a little bit, and Keith holds his breath because Lance’s legs are still on him. “Sometimes humans can be so evil that they turn into demons before they die.”

Of all things, Keith wasn’t expecting _that_ to be what demons are. Hell being real? Okay, sounds plausible, kind of. Demons being minions of hell? Cool, he can somewhat deal with that. Demons actually being humans who became so evil, before and after death, that they turned into shadowy abominations? Not quite as easy to accept.

Holy books certainly don’t prepare you for that possibility.

Clearly sensing Lance’s discomfort, Allie pitches in. “Warlocks are Witches who have demon blood in their veins. The difference between them is that Witches have something called grace, which you can see as the core of the magical reserve. Warlocks don’t have a grace. A long time ago, the line between Witches and demons was a lot more…blurry. Sometimes Witches had children with demons, and Warlocks were created from that. Nowadays Warlocks are just descendants from those unions. That’s vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters, genies, skinwalkers, lots of others. Monsters humans are so afraid of have their origins in sightings of Warlocks before Seals were created and kept all of our existences hidden.”

Shiro stares at Allie and Lance like _they’re_ the aliens here. “You can’t be serious.”

“Deadly.” Lance replies bluntly.

Even Pidge is knocked into silence at that. Hunk is suspiciously pale, while Shiro looks dumbfounded, kind of like a stunned fish with how his mouth opens and closes without saying a word before he leans back and practically flops on the couch like an actual, lifeless fish. Beside him, Allura and Coran still look confused, but clearly not for the same reasons as everyone else is. Keith considers them lucky in that regard; they don’t know that any of what Allie and Lance are telling them is basically shattering the Paladins’ entire worldview of their home planet.

When Keith glances at Lance from the corner of his eye, he’s surprised to see Lance looking almost…guilty. As if he’s sorry that he’s telling them all this. As if he wishes this wasn’t happening at all.

He wonders, if none of this had happened –if King Lykonark hadn’t essentially forced Lance to break his Seal, if Ladene hadn’t happened, if Allie hadn’t magically (literally magically) appeared on the Castle…would Lance have ever told them any of this? Ever? Or would he have kept his silence forever?

It gives him a strange feeling in his chest, like his heart is clenching too tight to beat properly, when he thinks of the fact that yes. Lance probably would never have told them anything if circumstances weren’t pushing him to. Lance is fucking fantastic at getting people to open up and let go of their problems. He easily accepts the burdens of their secrets –but when the tables are turned, it’s like plucking teeth from a giant stone statue, trying to get him to do the same.

Keith looks at Lance again, noticing the lines of tension bracketing his body, the way his eyes are closed as he leans on Hunk again but his lips are pressed into a near invisible line, the way his body isn’t as loose and uncoiled from some hidden emotion the way it usually is when he’s with the team. Keith thinks about how loudmouthed Lance is, how bright and happy he always is, how he flirts with anything that walks, his overwhelming (and rightly placed) confidence in his abilities. He thinks about those red eyes that have started to encroach in his dreams, like blood running into oceanic blue, a manic grin touching lips that curve into a smile he doesn’t recognize.

 _It’s a show,_ he realizes, painfully. _It’s all for show._

He’s known for a while now that Lance is loud to distract everyone else from their own anxious and scared thoughts. He’s bright and happy to pull them out of the darkness of war that threatens to plunge them into the depths of despair. He flirts horrifically to make others laugh. He fights with Keith and teases him to force him out of his own brooding thoughts, to force him to remember that he’s still human enough to care about the people around him, to recognize that they care about him too, no matter how hard it is for him to believe that.

And through all that, Lance hides himself behind the mask he wears when doing it all. He hides his own scared thoughts, his own dark past, behind an impenetrable mask, even as he struggles with his own demons –demons that might not be so metaphorical as Keith would have once believed.

“What I didn’t tell you about Witches,” Lance continues into the silence. “Is that we hunt demons. There’s a special organization of Witches, called the Order. I trained with them for a bit before I joined the Garrison. They…they train Witches to hunt demons and stop them from harming humans.”

“Stop them…how?” Keith asks hesitantly.

Lance looks at him, head tilted to the side a little, the lights of the Castle catching on the bright blue that seem shadowed, now. Burdened by something heavy and dark.

“Kill them.”

It’s Allie who says it. Lance turns away from Keith to Allie with a slight frown on his face as she continues, “Witches hunt and kill demons.”

Allura gapes at her. “You kill them? But why? I understand that they’re not good, but they’re humans, aren’t they?”

“No.” Allie answers in a hard, unflinching tone. “They are not like Galra, where some are good and some are not. Demons aren’t just ‘not good’, they’re _evil._ Once a human becomes a demon, they’re forever changed, and all they know is to spread as much havoc as they can. You can’t talk to them, reason with them.”

Allie holds her hand, fingers splayed open. Her eyes flash gold, and yellow mist floats from her upturned palm to dance in the air between everyone. It whirls in a tight, small tornado for a few seconds before the dust blows out. Before them is dark smoke, maybe half of Pidge’s height. But it’s not just smoke –there’s a discernible tail there, black and like a lizard’s, tipped with a blade protruding from its skin. Two appendages stick out from the shadow’s sides, each tipped with five talons that look made from steel.

As they watch, the shadow starts to get bigger, growing to almost Shiro’s height, gaining a solid form. It’s bulbous smoky shape draws in tighter, until the shadow stands in the shape of a tall man, tail shimmering into invisibility, claws retracting into a human-shaped hand. Patches of skin start to form over the black smoke, growing and connecting until an actual human stands before them. It is neither male nor female, with black hair and olive-toned skin and eyes that are an unfathomable black, and empty, devoid of life.

“The stronger ones wear human skin and blend into society,” Allie continues. The gold dust of Allie’s magic surrounding the human collapses in, and in a shower of dull sparks, the illusion vanishes as she lowers her hand to her lap. “They spread across the world to do as much harm as possible before Witches kill them, or before they die out because they can’t stay in corporeal forms for long. If we don’t kill them, they come after us.”

“They were human once.” Lance says quietly, so quietly that it’s hard to hear –but they all still do.

“Once,” she tells him. _“Once._ They’re not anymore.”

Lance doesn’t reply.

And Keith thinks, for the first time, really, he knows why Lance hates killing. Maybe this is why he got so tense when he thought Allie had killed those soldiers on the ship, why he apologized to Keith when he claimed responsibility for it. He trained with this ‘Order’ to kill demons. He probably actually did kill demons, too, and he still sees them as human –this Keith can easily tell, without Lance having to spell it out.

_He feels Lance tense at the sight of the stabbed Galra and the one with the broken neck. “Did she –”_

_“It was me.” Keith cuts in bluntly. He doesn’t know why he says it, but it’s already too late to take it back._

_Lance tightens his arms around Keith. Weakly, but enough to be felt. “I’m sorry.”_

Maybe this is where Lance’s aversion to killing comes from.

“What about the Ladenian?” Allura asks slowly, probably trying to lift the heavy, tense atmosphere. “The one from your memory, Lance? Is that –he is why you didn’t want to go to Ladene, isn’t he?”

For a princess trained in intergalactic diplomacy, her question has the exact opposite of dispelling the heavy mood. The change in the twins is instantaneous. Both freeze up like blocks of ice at mention of the Ladenian. Lance draws his legs off Keith and sits up, curling his arms around his legs as he stares fixedly at the floor. His eyes have turned to an ocean at storm, dark and impenetrable –you can’t see to the bottom no matter how bright a light you shine at its surface. Allie clenches her fists, and Keith is reminded of the fact that she has daggers up her sleeves. Her eyes are like glaciers being struck by lightning bolts. Something dark and angry flits through them before every emotion passing in them is shut down.

Keith is almost afraid to hear what they have to say.

It’s Allie who speaks first.

“Twelve years ago, demons…changed. Before, their attacks on Witches and humans were messy, and singular. They’d just blindly lash out. But then they started getting smarter.”

Shiro frowns, sitting up again and bracing his elbows on his knees. Ever the tactician. “Smarter how?”

“Their attacks got more strategic, on bigger scales –and they only came after Witches.” She answers. “Demons of a higher level than the usual used to stay on their own, solitary, like lone wolves. Then all of a sudden they started gathering lesser demons around them, making groups, _packs,_ and attacking Witches.”

Ice water slithers down Keith’s spine at her words at the memory of the shadow creature Allie killed when she was just a child, to protect Lance.

“Did you ever find out why?” Allura asks, so obviously concerned even though she has no obligation to be.

“Like, what changed?” Pidge adds, uncharacteristically quiet now. “Lone wolves, so to speak, don’t randomly decide to buddy up like that.”

“The Beast.” Allie replies bluntly. “To you he’s this Ladenian. To our people, he’s the Beast. Rylox.”

Pidge wrinkles her nose at that. “That sounds like some kind of antibiotic.”

Keith can’t help the quiet agreeing snort he lets out at that (because the fuck kind of name is _Rylox?_ ). He glances at Lance, to see a small, empty curl at the corners of his lips, a darkness in his eye that Keith has never see in him before. Any and all amusement at the name drops like a ten-ton stone through to the bottom of the ocean. The wary looks the team exchange all share the sense that whatever’s coming next, whatever the twins are about to tell them…it will be far from good.

“A year after the demons started strategizing their attacks, the –” Allie hesitates a moment, jaw clenching briefly before she continues. “The Beast stepped forward during consejo of the Witches –”

“A what?” Pidge interrupts, confused.

Allie blinks, before realizing her slip. “Oh, sorry. Consejo means council. Witches are governed by a Council of nine Witches. Nine Witches for the nine clans spread out across the world.”

Because of course clans are a thing with Witches.

“So you’re not ruled by a monarchy, but an elected group of individuals, yes?” Coran asks.

Allie hesitates before saying, “For five hundred years, at least.”

“What did Rylox do at the this council meeting?” Shiro asks. His eyes sharpen on the miniscule flinch Allie gives when he says that name.

“The Council had started meeting more frequently since the demons got more aggressive.” Allie continues slowly, steadily. “One day, the Beast just appeared at one, out of nowhere.”

“What did he want?” Allura asks. She looks annoyed. She’d been talking to the Ladenians when Lance was captured, trying to find out what they knew about the trap set on their planet. It’s clear that they didn’t mention anything of this Rylox to her. “And how could he be on Earth in the first place, doing all you’ve said he’s done?”

“I don’t know. None of us ever thought that the Beast is an alien. We all thought he was some obscure magical creature from a long time ago, one that no one knows about.” Allie spreads her hands out in a gesture of mock helplessness. “We didn’t know why he was at the meeting. He just came, like he’d blinked or teleported there. And then he left, without saying a word. We found out what he wanted a few days later, when this time, a demon general –yes, Hunk, those are a thing –when a general broadcasted a message to every Witch on the planet.”

Shiro asks, “What kind of message?”

“A video one.” Lance says. “He claimed responsibility for leading the demons against us. For turning them into his army.” A humourless smirk twists his lips. “The general informed us that that was his formal request to us to, essentially, roll over and let the demons take over and do what they wanted. They would leave Witches alone, as long as we left them alone to do whatever they wanted.”

“What did your Council do?” Coran asks.

“They said no, of course.” Allie answers tartly.

Lance scoffs at her. “Witches treat Warlocks like they’re subpar just because some ancestor of theirs decided to bone a demon. There’s no way the Council would ever let full-fledged demons run around unchecked.”

Allie flinches at Lance’s harsh wording as he uncrosses his legs and sits forward, planting his feet firmly on the floor. He’s still staring at a spot on the ground as he continues, “But that isn’t all the –isn’t all Rylox wanted from us.”

It looks like it physically pains Lance to say that name. Keith wonders what this Rylox could have done that the twins –and maybe all the other Witches –don’t even want to say his name, and instead choose to dub him ‘the Beast’.

As Allie takes over the explanation, Keith cocks his head to the side when he realizes something. Lance is the one who talks when Allie hesitates, clearly uncomfortable. Like with demons, and Warlocks. She hadn’t looked like she’d wanted to even talk about them at all, and she’d clearly been annoyed when Allura brought attention back to them, as if she was irritated that Allura caught on to how she skimped over that. Then Allie continues when Lance stops. They’re tag-teaming with this whole thing.

Something uncomfortable slithers in Keith’s stomach at their symbiosis, at how easily they work together.

“The Beast wanted the strongest of four people from us, in exchange for leaving us be.” She says quietly. “Two legacies, one named royalty, and one pureblood royalty.”

“Three what.” Pidge deadpans. “What are legacies? Named royalties?

 _“Pureblood_ royalty?” Hunk puts in. “That sounds like something out of Harry Potter. No offense –I think?”

“Kinda does,” Lance agrees.

“Before we had a Council, Witches were ruled by a monarch, like Coran said.” Allie answers. She lifts her legs and crosses them, leaning her elbows on her knees and continues. “Legacies are those Witches who are directly descended from the First Witch, a Scottish woman named Rowena. She was the first human to have magic, and passed it on. Named royalties are either our chosen members of council, or their eldest children. And pureblood means a Witch who is both directly descended from Rowena, and from our last Witch king. His name was Gavin McClain.”

Keith stops breathing.

“McClain?” Hunk repeats into the ensuing silence. His voice warbles a bit as he glances at a silent Lance and says, “As in…Lance McClain?”

Allie nods. She taps the back of her neck, where her tattoo is. “Our family tattoo is our last king’s sigil, because he is our ancestor. On top of that, we are descendants of the First Witch, which makes us legacies. Our father is on the council, and that makes us named royalties as well.”

Allura’s eyebrows are near to her hairline. Coran’s moustache looks decidedly alive as his eyes almost shine with boundless curiosity and interest at everything Allie’s saying. Both Alteans are blissfully heedless to the tension of the humans –and Fae –at the realization of what it means that the McClain’s –that _Lance –_ are descendants of both Rowena and Gavin. That they’re legacies, named royalty, _and_ purebloods.

Keith breathes out slowly, painfully, as he glances at the tense line of Lance’s back as he still sits leaning forward, staring so fixedly at the ground that it’s like he’s trying to burn a hole through the floor. Keith sits forward just a little, and can see a few of the dark blue lines of Lance’s tattoo on the back of his neck.

 _Fuck,_ he thinks shakily.

“You’re royalty?” Pidge asks, stunned, eyes wide as saucers behind her glasses. Allie nods. Pidge turns to stare at Lance. “But you never said anything.”

Lance shrugs.

Keith frowns. _There’s something wrong._ If Lance was royalty in the normal sense –actually, scratch that, _any_ sense at all –there’s no way he wouldn’t parade that around and play dramatics on it. Especially after he broke his Seal and could actually tell them. Yet he didn’t so much as breathe a word of it ever since he told them about Witches.

“What did –does –he want?” Shiro asks. “Why does the Beast want legacies and named royalties and a pureblood?”

“We don’t know,” Allie answers, shoulders sagging. “The general didn’t tell us.”

“Did you give him what he wanted?” Allura asks, brows knitted in concern, her eyes flitting repeatedly over to Lance’s continued silence.

“No.” Allie replies in a hard voice. “We didn’t. In retaliation, the general announced war on all Witches, and any who ally themselves with them. We’ve been at war for ten years now.”

“What about Ry –ah, the Beast?” Coran asks. “He didn’t get what he wanted, so what did he do? Besides lead an army of demons against your people, I suppose.”

“He did get what he wanted. Mostly.” Lance says softly. Everyone turns to him, a little surprised, but he doesn’t look at any of them. “We didn’t give him what he wanted, so he took them.”

“What do you mean by that?” Shiro asks, warily, like he’s afraid of asking it at all, but more afraid of not knowing the answer.

Keith glances at Allie. She’s not looking at any of them either. She’s staring at the floor, biting her lip hard enough that it might bleed, but she doesn’t stop. This time she doesn’t rise up to take the mantle of explaining this to the team. This time, she leaves Lance to do it.

Lance clasps his hands together between his knees, holding on tight enough that Keith can see the faint echo of the tension ticking in his jaw.

“Marcus Styne,” he says. “Was the son of Eliade Styne, a councilwoman. He was a named royalty. He had luck magic.”

Allie waves her hand and another illusion appears. This time it’s an image of a young man, somewhere in his mid-twenties, clear green eyes, and a wide smile with even white teeth, wearing a pink-and-yellow striped tank top and standing on a beach with his arm wrapped around a surfboard. “Marcus could predict the probability of certain events happening to get what outcome he wanted.”

“So –” Lance’s voice catches. “Sofia McClain and Alexander McClain were legacies. Sofia was our cousin.”

Allie flicks her fingers slightly and the illusion changes. It splits in two, a blank slate that slowly fills with a person in each image. In one is a young girl, maybe their age, hair cut into a sharp bob at her chin, her eyes a startling light brown ringed with blue at the edges. Despite her warm brown skin, her features make her look East Asian, maybe Japanese, but still markedly similar to Allie. She’s striking a superhero pose, literally dressed as a superhero –Wonder Woman. Her face is alight with teasing glee, mouth stretched wide in a bright grin. Lance’s mother is standing right behind her, smiling fondly at her.

The second image is of the man from Lance’s memories. Only this time, there is no blood around him. This time his eyes are not grey with death; they are the same blue as Allie’s, lightning crackling over an ocean, with a dark fringe hanging over his eyebrows. Where the girl looks like Allie, this man looks like Lance, an older version, their age now, but remarkably alike.

Keith knows he’s not mistaken about this, because Lance and Allie are both in the picture as well. The man, Alex, has an arm around each twin, holding them close to him. Lance and Allie, so young, only maybe ten or twelve, both seem to unwillingly be caught in the hug. Alex is giving Lance hair a vicious noogie while he presses a kiss to Allie’s chaotic mane of curls, nose scrunched as Allie looks to be yelling at him. Cradled securely in little Allie’s arms is a baby girl, with big blue eyes filled with sparkling brightness as she silently laughs at the shenanigans of her older siblings, pulling on a surprisingly thick clump of Allie’s wild hair in her little fist.

The two images hover in a cloud of gold dust for a few more moments before Allie drops her hands, and the images vanish. The brightness usually in her eyes is absent, dulled, as she regards them all frankly. Keith feels his heart shrivel to a tiny ball in his chest at the thought of those smiling faces, all dead with a Ladenian standing over them.

“Sofia had weather magic.” She murmurs. “And Alex was our brother. He had biokinesis, which is the ability to make someone bleed from a person’s orifices. Our Seals are imbued with some elements of biokinetic magic.”

_Blood leaks out from Lance’s ears, dribbles down his nose, weeps from the cracks of his eyes shut tight. His tattoo glows, so bright that it’s impossible not to notice the shafts of light beaming from under the collar of his favourite jacket._

“The Beast found them. All of them.” Finally, _finally,_ Lance looks up, and Keith’s breath catches at the darkness swimming in the blue, the raw pain and grief and anger swirling under a paper thin film of forced apathy. “Witches cannot live without our grace. It’s what keeps us alive. When the Beast got to them, he had his demon general broadcast it to us as he drained them all of their magic, and took their grace. For whatever reason, the Beast only wants Witches. Allie and I are all of what he wants, but he leaves her alone because she’s Fae.”

Shiro’s eyes widen a fraction of a second before everyone else comes to the same realization.

“Are you saying that you’re on his –his kill list?” he asks, pale, aghast at his own words. “You’re the last one on his list?”

Lance doesn’t answer. But that is answer enough.

The silence that follows echoes cruelly back at them, no one having a clue what to say, how to react.

In it, Keith can hear the Castle humming as its systems run in the background, the faint buzz of the lights keeping everything illuminated. It’s not as if the Castle doesn’t get this quiet sometimes, considering there’s only seven (eight?) people to fill its elephantine space, but it’s never like this. With everyone gathered together, within arm distance, yet so quiet it’s like no one’s even here.

But they are all here. And Keith can’t stop staring at Lance. At the tattoo on the back of his neck. At the tension bracketing his shoulders as they lift defensively. At the hard line of his jaw, clenched tight.

“It was different for Alex, though.” Lance mutters. Keith wonders if he’s the only one who can hear the jagged edges running under Lance’s voice, like fragile glass that has too many cracks in it too run as smooth as it’s pretending to. “M –my brother wasn’t supposed to die.” He drops his head and runs his fingers through his hair roughly. “He already Declared Fae. He wasn’t supposed to die.”

Allie seems to have enough at this point. Without a word, barely making a sound (which should be impossible, considering these couches squeak), she rises and pads over on silent feet to Lance. She stops in front of him. He looks up at her, her head tilted in a question. Without saying a word, he nods to the silent question she asks him.

Keith doesn’t move a muscle, wondering what’s happening, but Hunk does. He shifts away from Lance and gives Allie enough space to easily fit herself in between them. She winds her arm around Lance’s shoulders and pulls him back so that he’s leaning on her, head on her shoulder as he closes his eyes. She gently cards her fingers through his growing hair, curling at the ends, and murmurs something quietly to him before looking back at the team.

She chews on her bottom lip for a moment before sighing heavily. “When we were fifteen, the Beast kidnapped Lance. We knew it was the Beast because Alex saw him taking Lance, but he couldn’t follow because the demon general was there too. He was too strong for only one Witch. We were all frantic trying to find Lance, but –I don’t, I don’t know how, but somehow Alex got to Lance first.”

“He took you?” Allura repeats, staring at Lance with a complicated array of emotions play out over her face. Most prominent are regret, and…guilt. Keith wonders if she’s feeling some sort of misplaced responsibility for what Rylox –the Beast –has done to Lance’s world, to his people, to his family, just because Rylox is an alien. “Did he hurt you?”

Lance opens his eyes slowly. He doesn’t look at Allura, exactly –more like at a point just over her shoulder. “He was going to take my grace, like the others. But before he could, Alex found us. I don’t know how he did, either.” He licks his lips before shifting a little to lean more comfortably on Allie. “You know about the voices, right?”

Everyone nods hesitantly, wondering if this is a taboo topic they should just ignore or pretend doesn’t exist. Sort of like don’t poke the sleeping lion (or was it bear?). Shiro asks, “Can you hear them right now?”

Lance shakes his head. “It’s quiet for now.”

Keith doesn’t like how naturally Lance says ‘for now’.

“What did R –the Beast say to you while you were with him?” Allura asks, respecting the twins enough to use the name they are more comfortable with than the one they fear. “It’s absolutely outrageous that a Ladenian could have done all this and no one knew anything, or did anything.”

“He didn’t say anything.” Lance answers. “The Beast doesn’t talk. Ever.”

“Is he mute or something?” Pidge asks.

Lance shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t care.”

Movement from the corner of his eye attracts Keith’s attention to Coran. The Altean is frowning, pulling out his tablet and flicking through it. He scowls at what he sees before his eyes widen, the light from the tablet illuminating the wordless shock filling his eyes.

Keith frowns.

“When Alex found me, the Beast…” he trails off, lips twisting as he frowns. Allie turns her head so her lips are near his hair and murmurs something quietly. Lance shakes his head before he sits up properly, crossing his legs but still sitting close to Allie. He holds his hands out in front of him, staring at them like they’re not part of his body as he says, “The Beast possessed me.”

Keith’s eyes widen. He gapes at Lance uncomprehendingly. Lance seems to almost shrink in on himself at all the attention he’s getting, because Keith’s not the only one staring stupidly at him, and he shuffles back on the couch so that he’s leaning back on it. This time it’s Allie who leans towards him, resting her head on his shoulder. He accepts her comfort wordlessly, and again, something wiggles in Keith’s stomach.

“Possess?” Hunk finally speaks, brows furrowed in concern for his best friend. “Possess as in like how demons possess people?”

“Kind of.” Lance replies. “A fragment of his soul entered my body and I –I lost control. I could see and feel everything he did, but I couldn’t do anything to stop it. _He_ had control over every move I made, and while he was in me, he –” he frowns. “The best way to describe it is that he opened doors in my mind. He distracted me by filling my head with these voices that are…not pleasant.”

That’s putting it mildly.

“And these doors, you haven’t been able to close them?” Shiro asks gently.

Lance shakes his head. “However he did it, nothing I do can close them completely. It’s usually easy to keep them down, but sometimes they get strong, and loud. Our pendants,” he pulls at the cord of his necklace. “Connect Allie and me together.”

“It’s not really telepathy,” Allie adds, seeing the question easily reflected in Pidge’s eyes. “But the presence of my mind closer to his because of the magic in our pendants helps to balance out his control over the voices.”

Lance continues, “Whenever the voices take over, though, I can’t remember what happens. Or what I do.”

“What about this last year?” Hunk asks. “We’ve been in space this whole time, and Allie wasn’t with us.”

“Distance makes it hard, but the pendants still keep us connected.” Allie answers.

“About R –the Beast,” Allura speaks slowly, carefully, treading on fragile ground. “What was he trying to distract you from?”

Keith carefully watches Lance after Allura’s question. He wonders if it was a bad idea to do this so soon, when Lance just got out of the healing pod –when they still don’t exactly know just how much Lance has been affected by his time with the Galra, and how it will show up now that he’s here, safe, but still scarred. Shiro looks on the verge of calling this whole talk off so that Lance can rest, despite them all sitting on the edge of their seats –literally –to find out what happens next. A sick sort of curiosity that Keith can’t deny, no matter how much he wishes he could.

Lance is pale. Almost like someone mixed white paint with the dusky tones of his skin. There are deep shadows nestled under his eyes like bruises. The blue of his eyes is…they’re dulled. Like that spark that showed Lance’s soul through his eyes has dimmed until it can barely be seen anymore.

“He wanted me to willingly give him my magic. All of it, and my grace.” Lance answers quietly. “He wanted me to willingly sacrifice myself to him. When I refused, he…he possessed me, and used me to –to kill my brother.”

Keith goes utterly still at those quiet words. Everyone seems to have frozen to blocks of ice, staring at Lance with eyes wide as saucers. His words bounce off the walls and echo in the sudden silence of the room.

_Lance is on the ground, barely conscious, a puddle of blood spreading out under him –but it’s not coming from him. Beside Lance is a body, unmoving, limp, sky blue eyes greyed out as they stare lifelessly up at the dark night. Keith follows the trail of handprints in the circle of blood surrounding the man, tracking them back to…to Lance._

_Lance is dragging his hands back from the pool of blood of the man who looks like a slightly older, a little rougher copy of him. The blood is smeared over his pale skin, shaking as Lance lifts his hands to stare at them like they’re not his, tears falling down his face in rivers that don’t ever seem to end. His hands drop to the ground limply, as if he can’t hold them up anymore. His head turns, cheeks coming to rest on the gravel of the road he’s on as he stares at the figure gazing impassively down at him._

_Ladenian._

“I didn’t want to go, Princess, because all I’ve ever known of any Ladenian is the Beast. He murdered my brother and my cousin, and Marcus, and so many others, in the most painful way a Witch can die. He’s leading an entire army of demons against our people. I didn’t know that he’s an alien, but –but you get why I don’t want to go to an entire planet full of others like him, right?” Lance ask, looking directly at Allura as he says this, almost pleadingly. As if he wants her to understand why he acted the way he did after they received the distress signal.

“Of course, Lance,” she answers immediately, shifting forward a little in her seat, almost like she wants to stand and go over to him. She remains seated, but looks him right in the eye as she says, “Now that I know, and can understand the circumstances and reason behind it, there is no way I would expect you to willingly go there.”

Lance manages a grateful smile to her that Keith can see is strained at the edges.

“Princess,” Coran says, softly, totally unlike him. Keith blinks in surprise –Coran had been so quiet all this time that he’d almost forgotten he was there. Now, the Altean is staring down at his tablet with a bleak look in his eye. “I think I may know who this ‘Beast’ is. Who the Ladenian is behind that moniker.”

Everyone turns to Coran so fast they almost give themselves whiplash. Even Allie sits up abruptly, her back ramrod straight as she stares at Coran. Beside her, Lance gapes in total stupefaction at him.

“What?”

“Do you remember the briefing I gave you all on Ladenian history?” he asks.

“Uh, vaguely.” Hunk replies uncertainly.

Allura turns to him and asks, “What have you found?”

Coran clear his throat before answering. “Shiro, you asked if there was any record of civil unrest that could have been the source of the distress signal. While we now know that was not the case at the time, after updating the Castle’s archives to include information on the current status of planets we know of according to a range of different factors, I found that there has been no major civil unrest or particularly notable uprisings in the last thousand phoebs. But, there was an attempted assassination on the then and current monarchical ruler of the Ladenians, coupled with some political intrigue.”

Pidge clicks her fingers in understanding. “I remember this! Wasn’t the culprit ex…iled…” she trails off as dawning horror crackles in every tense line of her body.

Keith’s eyes widen at her words and what Coran’s just said as Shiro asks, “How long ago was this?”

“About sixteen decaphoebs ago,” Coran says, glancing down at his tablet before looking up again. “In Earth terms, that would be fourteen to eighteen years. It fits the time period of your people’s war by a couple of years, Lance, Allie.”

Both twins can only stare in incomprehensible shock, not saying a word.

Keith swallows. “Coran, what was the name of the Ladenian that was exiled?”

Coran shifts, visibly uncomfortable. His lips are pressed in a terse line as he drops his eyes to stare at the tablet for a long moment that seems to stretch into infinity. He looks up, sorrow clouding his usually vibrant gaze.

“His name is Otac Leda Rylox.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bien – okay/fine  
> Gracias – thank you (okay seriously if you don’t know this then what the heck)
> 
> I’m Russian. Of course I’m going to include domovoy, although I tweaked it a bit and made them a bit scarier than they actually are in irl Slavic folklore.
> 
> It makes little sense to me how action scenes and fighting and shit is so, so much easier to write than…explanations? In a bearable readable hopefullynotboringAFbutprobablystillboringanyways way? Halfway through the chapter (right after Lance and Allie’s fight) I got writer’s block because I just didn’t know how to continue. How did I get past the block?
> 
> Keith. I switched the POV. I swear, switching POV’s freaking WORKS. Plus I take short breaks while writing chapters for this fic by writing chapters for another Klance fic [that shall be posted when I fkcn finish it] before coming back to this one and…it works? Gives me perspective and helps? So yeah. I do that.
> 
> Please tell me what you think of Allie and Lance’s interactions with each other? Emotions are running high between the two, so there’s bound to be some tension. They’re both strong personalities (at least I entertain myself with the fantasy that Allie is at any rate). I mean, think about it. There’s a war being fought on Earth between Witches and literal demons controlled by an alien no one knew was an alien who’s hunting Lance to kill him for shady magical shit, who’s already killed Lance’s older brother, and cousin, and many others, in the most painful way a Witch can die. Then Lance suddenly disappears for an entire year. Then Allie’s yanked into space to find her lil bro, only he’s being tortured by purple feline aliens. Allie hasn’t exactly seen what Zarkon’s done to entire planets, so she’s not going to immediately understand why Lance stays in the fight against Zarkon over being safe like his family wants him to be. She’s just very scared to lose her brother. I hope this explains some of Allie’s actions, like her binding Lance’s magic to keep him from burning out and getting in shit again because of it. 
> 
> Allie’s going to remain with the team because I kinda feel like, at least in this weird af AU, the team can’t contact Earth because they’re too far away for communications, and they are wary of physically going there because what if the Galra are watching/tracking Earth? I MEAN, the Galra first got Shiro, Matt, and Sam on Kerberos. And the Castle’s too big, the Lions are too big, easy to detect. I know there are the pods like the one Sam’s used in season 5, but…let’s just ignore that because this whole fic is all over the place and ignores shit while paying attention to other shit. :)
> 
> [Tumblr](https://www.azurehyn.tumblr.com) || [Wattpad](https://www.wattpad.com/user/azurehyn)
> 
> p.s., “hladna studen” (name of the system Ladene is in), “veliki”, “mali”, “ladene” (planets in said system), and “otac leda” are not words I randomly came up with. They’re in an Earth language and have meanings pertaining to the story. :)  
> no, it is not russian.


	12. apology update

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This isn't an update, but to those keeping track of this fic, please read

Hi guys

So. First off I just want to say I’m really sorry for the complete lack of updates. It probably looks like I’ve abandoned this story, right?

Actually, no. I’m still very much into this story and still very definitely going to continue with it. But I just need to take a break because I’m not doing very well mentally. I’ve had problems because of my home life and issues I’ve had growing up for as long as I can remember, but it’s never been quite so bad as it is this time. It’s starting to affect my writing, even, which is the one thing that’s always been there for me, and always kept me happy through all the shit, and that just makes the whole thing worse because writing is supposed to be my refuge, and now the shit at home is messing with it and taking it away from me, and that’s not something I want to happen. I’ve been trying to push past it because there’s you guys here on AO3 who like what I write, and guys over on Wattpad who like what I write there, and it means so much to me that there are people out there who like both the original content I put out and my own take on already established worlds through fanfiction.

Really, I can’t express enough how much it means to me when I get comments on my stories from all of you. My whole life I’ve been repeatedly told that I’m worthless and I mean nothing and a whole bunch of other really horrible things by the one person who shouldn’t ever say those things, and circumstances force me to continue living with them despite everything in me telling me I have to get away. The one thing they’ve never been able to touch because I never let them was my writing, but now there are other things that are breaking down the walls and making it hard for me to separate everything bad from my ability to write.

For a little while I thought I was doing better, but every time I started to feel better something would happen to take me right back to the bad place, and it keeps happening. I would try and get help, but I can’t –not because I don’t want to, but because I don’t have the means to or the support of the people around me for it. The closest thing I have to support is my best friend, but she lives in another country so there’s only so much she can do. I used to think I was pretty strong, that I wasn’t the type to buckle down, that I never needed to rely on anyone else (it actually used to really confuse me why people relied on others, and I know why now, but sometimes it still confuses me) but now I’m crying every day when I never fucking used to and doing other things to cope and it’s just really hard.

Right, enough with the stupid pity party. I’m just here to say that I’m going to be taking a break while I deal with shit. I’m not sure for how long (I’m anticipating a couple of weeks, maybe a few months, idk), but I definitely plan to continue with this story. The point of this message-update is to say, I AM **NOT** ABANDONING THIS STORY. I have a whole general outline of the plot planned down, I just need to write it. Canon Lance isn’t quite so angsty as fanon Lance regularly is, but writing him that way is a pretty good outlet. I love this story and I love writing, I just need to take some time to myself so I don’t start to dislike writing because I associate it with coping against the bad things so strongly. I will come back, but I don’t want to leave anyone hanging with absolutely no news, because I know how annoying that is. I’m really sorry.

\--xeah

 

p.s., good news is that at least the first arc in the three I have planned is done? The first arc being Lance’s capture/torture/rescue, that is. :)


	13. i am the secret (i am the end)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Punk won't let Lance hide.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um. Well. Hello there. This is xeah. You might possibly remember me from a time before I went MIA. Nice to meet you again *awkward wave* If anyone's actually returning to this chaotic mess of a fic, seriously hi! And thank you so much to everyone who’s been patient af with me while I had my ridiculously prolonged mental breakdown! Because that was fun!
> 
> [it was not]
> 
> I'm going to be up-front and say that while I'm doing better now, I haven't had a chance to literally DEAL with the reasons behind why I had a sort-of mental breakdown, so until that's possible for me, I'm going to be taking things slow. As you can see, I was being serious about me being serious about finishing this fic, but it's going to take some time. I hope you can be patient with me >.<
> 
> Anyways. Here is the actual chapter 12! Enjoy~
> 
> “i am the secret (i am the end)” = Dark Matter, Les Friction

Lance goes to the one place in the whole Castle where he doesn’t have to wear a mask that he needs to hide behind, where he doesn’t need to handle the looks on the faces of his teammates at everything they now know of him, of his life and the beast that hunts him, where he doesn’t have to grapple with Allie’s simmering indignation at the implications of what it means that the Ladenians exiled one of their own and _let_ him terrorize another species.

He goes to Blue.

She’s been quietly there, at the back of his mind, all this time since he stumbled out of the healing pod. She hasn’t pushed him to come see her, knowing he needed to spend some time with the others first, knowing he needed to get the weight of his past (some of it, leastways) off his shoulders before going to her. She knows of the others’ desperation to see him, to hear him talk, to be near him. She’s been content simply knowing that he was near her, for the time being.

She’s just…been there. At the back of his mind, a firm, comforting presence, cooling the spikes of his frazzled nerves, letting out low, almost indiscernible growls whenever the voices started to get _just_ loud enough for him to hear, even with Allie sitting right next to him.

No one follows him down to the hangars when he silently stands up and leaves the lounge. For that he’s grateful. Maybe they can sense that now he needs time on his own. Now, he just needs to be alone.

When the door swishes open and he sees Blue’s particle barrier, something in him tightens to a ball in his chest. It bounces up to his throat and constricts, until it’s hard to breathe. He starts off at a stumble, and then he’s running before he even knows it. Blue’s soothing purrs grow louder the closer he gets. He doesn’t need to say anything, because the moment he’s within reach, she lets down her barrier and lowers her head, maw open wide. He practically crawls up the stairs and stumbles into the cockpit like a drunken sailor finding his land legs before he slumps heavily in the chair.

He doesn’t realize he’s crying without tears until Blue’s presence washes over him. She’s an ocean, overwhelming in her power, overwhelming in how much of _her_ there is, of how much she cares for him. He’s a small, lonely boat compared to her, a boat that’s overturned, capsized, and she swells around him.

But she doesn’t drown him. No, she fills him up to the brim with her love and worry and concern and need for him –and not just because he’s a Paladin. It’s because it’s _him._ She whines at the muffled cries he stuffs back in his throat, and he can feel her sorrow over his, her need to help in whatever way she can.

He cries quietly. Looking at Lance, the way he normally is –you’d think he’d be a loud crier. It’s not even like he hasn’t cried like that before. But no. No tears sting his eyes, no tears burn silver fire down his cheeks. Instead, they collect, in his throat, in his chest, pulsing like a live thing, overflowing at each beat, but he doesn’t let them out because he’s so _weak_ already, and he won’t let himself have even this, because look at all the trouble he’s been all his life, look at all the trouble he’s brought now. Blue surges around him and surrounds him completely, curling herself around him so tight that he slips and forgets those thoughts of weakness, until he starts to wonder where he ends and she begins, where she ends and he begins.

He forgets why he’s trying to keep himself from crying. There are so many reasons that he just loses track of them all. He simply curls into a ball and lets how much he’s missed Blue overcome him, and he strangles the tears he’s been holding in for years and years, fighting to keep them from coming out because he has to, he _has to keep them in,_ even as the aching despair bludgeoning him to bloody pieces calls out to _them._ He unwittingly breaches the door, and the voice start to slip out again.

He lets them.

Not by much. He doesn’t give them enough leeway to take control the way they crave to, and it’s almost like Allie’s binding his magic has limited them somewhat, but he lets their poisonous words wash over him, leaking into the crevices of his broken soul. Blue growls menacingly enough that they don’t try to overtake him the way they normally would, but even she isn’t strong enough to keep them as far away from him as she wants to. She isn’t strong enough, because there’s a part of Lance that _wants_ the pain their words bring him, that _wants_ to feel the guilt and sorrow and agony that they do, because it reminds him of why he can’t let himself cry.

There’s a part of him that almost welcomes them, because he doesn’t know what else will be left of him if they’re gone.

↭§↭

Lance doesn’t realize there’s someone in Blue’s hangar until a long while later. He doesn’t know how long they’ve been sitting there –really, he doesn’t know how long _he’s_ been curled up in the pilot chair, staring blankly out in front of him yet not actually seeing anything (anything being the images of space Blue decided to pull up on one big screen over the dashboard) –but judging by the way they look, it’s been long enough that they got comfortable with the swathe of blankets settled around them, head comfortably nestled on not one, or even two, but _three_ pillows as they doze, with a fourth being hugged to their stomach like a large teddy bear.

There’s only one person he knows who sleeps with three pillows. Here’s a hint; he’s a human teddy bear himself.

Lance stares down at the floor through Blue’s eyes, eternally grateful that the Lions’ eyes are built so that anyone inside can look on the outside with those on the outside none the wiser to the fact that they’re being watched. Sure, you can see that as creepy, but at the same time, who cares? No one’s gonna know.

(Unless you blab. Then if you’re accused of being some creepy stalker, it’s your own fault.)

(He would know. This has happened before. Pidge was a lot more colourful with her descriptions.)

(Pidge can be fucking terrifying.)

When his brain catches up to what he’s seeing, he reaches over to Blue’s dashboard and presses a button. His bones creak like weak wood with too much weight pressing down on it. There’s a faint beep, and a small dot lights up beside the button he’s pressed.

“Hunk?”

His voice croaks like a dying bullfrog’s. He scrunches his nose in distaste at the way he sounds, but turns his attention back to the hangar when Hunk jumps up, pillows and blankets flying up around him with the sudden movement before settling. Hunk looks more surprised at his call than like he’d been sleeping.

“Hey, buddy!” Hunk calls out, cheerily waving up to him. Obviously he can’t see Lance, but it doesn’t take much to guess where he is.

Lance frowns. “How long have you been down there?”

“Uh,” Hunk scratches his cheek, tipping his head back to fix his bandana in place as he thinks. “A couple of varga? Maybe?”

_Let in?_

He considers it. He came here to be alone, knowing that no one would follow after him, not even Allie. But if it’s really been that long, then maybe it’s enough? Maybe he’s been alone, listening to the battery acid whispers of the voices, for long enough?

He looks down at Hunk, standing on that stone cold floor, picking up the blankets and pillows strewn around him. It couldn’t have been a comfortable couple of hours for him.

Lance enacts a volleyball match in his head. Blue watches it, more out of curiosity at the image of a ball labelled TO BE ALONE passing over a net, then the words changing to LET HIM IN as the ball crosses over the net again. A few seconds later, he doesn’t need to say anything for Blue to instantly know what he wants. Slowly, so as not to jostle him, she lowers her head to the hangar floor and opens her jaw wide. Hunk grins radiantly at her (Jesus fuck but Hunk has the brightest smile in the universe), picks up the last pillow, and makes his way over to the open invitation awaiting him. Lance listens to the metallic patter of feet and the hushed murmur of, _Thanks Blue,_ as Hunk makes his way to the cockpit.

“Hey,” Hunk says as soon as he’s within earshot. He comes to stand by the chair Lance is sitting in, legs drawn up, arms wrapped around his knees, staring dead ahead at the wall of the hangar. “Ooh, wow, that’s a pretty sight,” he says, ogling with wide eyes at the silent, monotonous film of space Blue’s got rolling, as if they’re not living in it every day of their lives.

“Yeah,” Lance murmurs listlessly.

“Here, I brought these for you. Figured you might need ’em if you want to spend the night up here.”

Lance looks over to see Hunk holding one of the blankets and a pillow out for him. He blinks stupidly at them for a moment before he takes them with a quiet thanks, to which Hunk hums happily. Hunk settles himself on the floor next to the pilot seat, snapping the blanket out to full length and settling himself on it, both pillows piled under his head as he stretches himself out and watches the screen.

Lance watches him until he stops. Then, moving slow so that the wooden creak of his bones isn’t heard, he pulls his own blanket around his shoulders. He puts the pillow behind his neck, sighing internally at the relief of having his head tilting back onto something soft instead of the hard head of the chair.

(No offense to Blue.)

They sit in silence for a while. Lance doesn’t mind, though. That’s the thing about his friendship with Hunk –sometimes it’s loud, full of belly laughter and truly terrible puns (that can come from either side, honestly), or it can be like this. Both of them, just sitting, sharing space, silence, knowing the other needs the quiet but doesn’t want the quiet that comes with being alone.

He wonders if this will be one of the last time he gets to have these moments with Hunk, now that he knows about Lance’s past, his world. About the bloody monumental shit he’s been keeping from them for so long.

He wonders if Hunk feels a little betrayed. He knows Hunk knows that he never said anything about being a Witch because of the Seal –but what about after that? It’s been over three weeks since then. Lance squints at Blue’s dashboard. It’s been almost a month, actually, since he broke the Seal. Almost a month since they found out that he’s a Witch. More than enough time to tell, if not everyone, then at least Hunk, about his past. Hunk’s his best friend. Why wouldn’t he tell him?

That’s…that’s exactly why. Hunk is his best friend, the only one in a long, long time who looked at him and saw the person he wanted to be, and not the person everyone in his world thinks he is just because he was born with a little more magic than they were.

(He’s the only one who sought him out in a crowd to spend time with him, who wanted to get to know him for _him,_ and not for who his father is, not for who his ancestors are, not for what rumours have said he can do, whether true or not –and certainly not to ogle and stare and whisper at him because of what hunts him.)

He didn’t want to tell Hunk because he doesn’t want Hunk to look at him the way his people do, to judge him for not being better than he is, for not being what they want him to be. Hunk –and everyone else on this team –saw him for what he is, what he _can be_ without the baggage that comes with his magic. Don’t get him wrong, he loves his magic, accepts it as part of himself more than he does most other things about himself; but he didn’t want it to be a reason he loses what little he has out here.

Lance leans back in the chair a little, huddling deeper into the cocoon of the heavy blanket wrapped around his shoulders. _It was good while it lasted._

**_:that’s what you think:_ **

He hides a flinch at the harsh reminder. Needing to hear something besides the voices and his and Hunk’s breathing, he asks, “How is everyone doing?”

Hunk sighs lightly. “Everyone’s pretty shook up.” He raises his hands and lifts six fingers. “Keith’s doing a broody thing in the training room,” one finger goes down. “Shiro’s doing a talk-about-your-feelings-instead-of-trying-to-beat-them-out-of-existence-on-the-gladiators thing with Keith in the training room,” another finger goes down. “Allie looked kinda like she was about to go supernova –you know, her hands were glowing and there were those sparks all over her –so Pidge took her to the kitchen to try and shovel food into her,” an amused smile takes of Hunk at Pidge acting like a mother hen when usually it’s everyone else being the mother hen to her bumbling attempts at not dying because she forgot to eat two days in a row. He blinks. “By the way, can Allie set things on fire? Because she looks like she can set things on fire.”

“Uhm. She’s tried.” What she tried to light up was actually Lance’s hair after he shaved her hair off. “Didn’t work.”

Thank the gods for that.

Hunk nods, gratified that he can let Allie near the kitchens without the entire place spontaneously combusting. “Coran’s trying to calm Allura down because the Princess is pretty, uh, _pissed_ about this whole thing with the Ladenians.” Hunk drops his hands back to his lap, smiling at Lance. “And I’m here with you to keep you company, and also to take you to the kitchen for some broth because don’t think I didn’t notice you feeding the mice and Allie more than yourself, dude.”

Lance opens his mouth to deny it, but stops himself because, really, it’s the truth. His stomach felt like it was liquidated, so he’d only eaten the bare minimum. Instead, he hums vaguely, a neither ‘yes’ or ‘no’, turning back to watch the exploding star that Blue’s decided to play on the screen. Distantly, he wonders where she’s getting this video (videos?) from. Or if she’s replaying something from her own memories? Pretty rude of him not to keep watching, like, it’s common courtesy –

Blue pokes him with a single claw. _No distraction._

The screen flickers like static for a second, and he knows that’s her warning. If he uses watching what she’s playing as an excuse to ignore Hunk, she’ll turn it off.

He sighs inwardly. Sometimes Blue really reminds him of Mami.

After a couple of ticks creep by in another bout of silence, he asks, in a subdued whisper, “You’re not going to say anything?”

Hunk doesn’t react for a moment. The interior hull of Blue’s cockpit is hushed, considering they’re not in the middle of yet another space battle, but even so, he spoke so quietly that for a moment he wonders if Hunk heard him.

Then Hunk shrugs nonchalantly. “Nah.” A considering pause. “The last couple of weeks have been pretty –rough. I kind of just want to sit and stare at you, but that’s creepy, so I’ll settle for sitting with you.”

Lance blinks stupidly at the dashboard, then swings his astounded gaze down to where Hunk lies on the floor of the cockpit, smiling faintly, as if he knows some amusing little secret that Lance doesn’t. Which, ironic, considering Lance is the one with all the secrets that have just been aired out like a musty blanket snapping in the wind for all to smell.

“I’m sorry,” he finally manages. It comes out only a _little_ choked up.

Hunk sits up quickly at that, exclaiming, “What? No, no-no-no, Lance, you have nothing to be sorry for!”

“I do,” he says, curling in on himself a little more. “I kept all this shit from you.”

**_:and then you went and got yourself captured and made them waste time trying to find a useless paladin they’re going to replace you you’re too much trouble all you do is annoy everyone all you do is waste precious air you don’t need to be breathing:_ **

He knows. He knows.

“Yeah, but Lance, that’s –it’s some pretty heavy stuff. I mean, I get why you didn’t tell anyone.” Hunk crosses his legs, bracing his elbows on his knees, utterly oblivious to the voices whispering in Lance’s ear. He knows Hunk is looking at him, but he keeps his gaze firmly fixed on the dashboard, as if another screen will pop up any second now that’ll feed him lines on what to say, how to apologize, how to not lose his closest friend. “I just…now that we do know, admittedly finding out about it in a not-cool way, but now that we _do_ know, I just hope you don’t feel like this is something that’ll drive a wedge between us.”

 _But_ “Isn’t it?” he mutters bitterly.

**_:it is:_ **

“It’s not.” Hunk answers firmly. His tone brooks no room for argument. “It’s not any different to when we found out about you being a Witch. It’s just something that’s always been a part of you. The only thing that’s changed is that now we know.” He leans forward a little, trying to catch his eye, but Lance stoically refuses to look at him. “Nothing changed when you told us about being a Witch, remember? Except actually _seeing_ it happen. By the way, the blinking thing when I’m cooking –dude, don’t do that.” Hunk shakes his head morosely, but there’s –there’s _humour_ there, there’s silent laughter peeking in between his words as he adds, “You really don’t want to know what happens when I mix the Altean version of salt with trapitikas roots.”

Despite himself, despite the gravity of his past that pulls and pulls at him with the force of an eternally hungry black hole, the corner of his lips tick up a little. “Oh yeah? What happens?”

Hunk grunts. “If you think the explosions when Galra fighters are big, go ahead and try and find out.” He closes his eyes, as if praying to the heavens. “Salt is not supposed to be able to do that. Like, that salt is fine with anything else, but _trapitikas root?_ No, big no.”

Lance snorts, then freezes, as if his ice powers have broken out of control and turned him into a popsicle. He waits for some repercussion, some consequence for laughing –but none comes. Hunk just beams at him, so wide that on any other person Lance would think it fake, would think it physically _hurts_ to smile that big, but on Hunk it’s completely natural. Lance relaxes his tense muscles in increments, still watchful as they go back to watching the images of space Blue’s projecting onto her screens.

Easy smile still on Hunk’s face, he continues, “Anyways, like I was saying. Nothing changed when we found out you’re a Witch. Nothing has to change now that we know more than that. If anything does change, it’ll only be on your end, and, buddy, I’m _here,_ okay?” his voice takes on an uncharacteristically serious tone, one Lance has only heard a handful of times. Lance’s spine straightens a little, the way it does whenever he faces a commanding officer in a dead-serious situation. “I know how you can get sometimes, Lance. I know you go a little too deep in your head and start thinking about things the wrong way round, but I’m here if you want to talk about absolutely anything, okay? Don’t –don’t listen to those voices if they’re telling you I don’t care or something, because _they are wrong._ I do care, more than I can say, and I want to be here for you. If you’ll let me.” He adds on, a shade of the sometimes-too-nervous teddy bear returning.

The voices fall silent at that, abruptly cut off from saying exactly what Hunk has just invalidated. For a moment, Lance is thrown in limbo; who does he believe? Hunk, his best friend, who’s only just found out about his past and the things he’s done? Or the voices, who’ve been with him so long that sometimes he thinks he was born with them, who’ve always been right about the people who only ever wanted him for what he could do for them instead of wanting him for _him?_

Slowly, Lance nods. “Okay.”

He doesn’t say who he’s agreeing with. He doesn’t really know.

Hunk watches him for a moment, as if mentally debating the same question himself. Then, “Can I hug you?”

Lance is about to say yes, because that’s what he always says, even on days when that’s the last thing he wants, because that wasn’t something Lance McClain said – _no._ That wasn’t something he said because he’s a touchy-feely person all-round, and that’s an image he had to maintain so no one would peel his skin off and pry his bones apart to see what lies inside in the gooey, ashy mess within.

But now the people who matter do know.

So he stutters, “N –not right now.”

Hunk immediately nods understandingly, no vaguely irritated or ticked off look crossing his face. Regardless, a sliver of uncertainty darts through Lance with all the finesse of a bull in a shop full of china plates, and he hurries to add, “But –but maybe –maybe next time?”

He hates how childishly hopeful and scared he sounds.

Hunk smiles at him. “Whenever you’re ready, buddy. Whenever you’re ready.

↭§↭

A day later finds Lance on the bridge in the dead of night, unable to sleep, still managing to avoid everyone, all the lights turned off and the silver lines of the star-chart whispering above him as he lies back and idly flicks through the universe. The mice are all scattered about him, although Chulatt’s probably with Allura in her bedroom. They’re all sleeping now in various adorable positions, after spending the last odd-hour diving into his jacket pockets, his jean pockets, _and his mouth,_ while he scrambled to get them out because the amount of wriggling they do is enough to have him shrieking in ticklish laughter.

(He thinks maybe that was why they kept doing it.)

(But really, he could have done without a mouthful of space mice fur.)

The Castle has been floating through an uninhabited solar system far enough out of the possibility of Galra detection that they needn’t worry about that one thing, at least. For now, anyways. Lance knows this weird stretch of silence in the war isn’t going to last long. It never does, and guilt boils in him like bubbling oil when he thinks about how this is because of _him._ How Allura had to announce that they were taken a break until Lance was ready, because he’s still the Blue Paladin. She and Shiro have been keeping in contact with the Blade for updates on the Galra Empire’s movements, but so far it’s been quiet on that end.

(He overheard Shiro inquiring about the whereabouts of Commander Radnak from Kolivan. Apparently, Radnak is notorious even within the higher echelon circles of the Galra because of his disposition to the more…unsavoury methods of information extraction from prisoners of war.)

(He spun around and walked right the fuck away from overhearing that conversation.)

He’s guilty about the team being forced to take this hovering break because of him, but…there’s a small part of him that’s relieved, too. He hates this antsy feeling coiled deep inside him that’s just waiting for something to go wrong, for some silent bomb to go off, a feeling that’s only exacerbated by the voices pushing it to the forefront of his mind whenever he thinks to try and take a nap, to eat, to just peacefully _be –_ but there’s relief, there, too. Relief that he’s still a Paladin, that Blue didn’t choose someone better, someone more worthy, someone who could actually do their job without screwing everything up.

(Blue smacks him upside the head for that one, much as she mentally can. Her irate grumbles don’t stop until he apologizes profusely for that line of thought. And yes, he apologizes for it, but it doesn’t stop those feelings from swirling restlessly inside his chest, as if the voices are dipping their invisible, disembodied fingers into the mass of bubbling liquid and stringing it out, draping it over him, reminding him of its existence at every turn.)

He waves his hand, watching the star charts whirl away from him in blinking green and silver dots, replaced with new stars, different stars, set in patterns that are familiar in their strange patterns that he never would have seen from Varadero Beach. Beside them are the occasional little lines of Altean text that pop up when he selects a start to see what it’s called.

He keeps his mind carefully blank as he watches the glittering dots of light move around him. Blessedly, the voices are quiet right now. They tend to be reactive when there’s no action going on, picking at every little thing anyone around him is saying and twisting their words so that Lance is no longer sure of what they really mean by what they say. Now, there’s no one here for the voices to target.

There’s just him.

Here.

Alone.

Staring at stars he doesn’t recognize, wondering if he’s flown in them before.

**_:how miserable you are look at you so pathetic:_ **

Okay, maybe not so alone.

In the dead silence of the bridge, it isn’t hard to miss the distinct _swish_ of the entrance doors sliding open. Lance immediately tenses, mind flashing to the faces of everyone else who lives on the Castle, trying to gauge what they’re reaction might be to seeing him here, trying to figure out which side of the many-faced mask he should show them if they approach him. Half of him hopes they don’t see him, almost hidden as he is so close to the bay windows. Maybe if he keeps very, very still, they’ll just come in, do whatever they came here to do, and walk right back out, none the wiser to his presence.

Unless it’s Allie, hunting him down. It’s a thing she does when she doesn’t think it’s a good idea for him to be alone. She’s disturbingly good at it.

So is Keith, for that matter. He wonders what he’d do if Keith is the one who comes in.

Quiet footsteps patter on the floor, too light and quick to be Keith’s. His gut tightens when he realizes they are unerringly headed his way. The mice stir at the intrusion in their various positions around the room, but otherwise remain asleep. Mustering as wide a smile as he can, he glances back –and the smile stutters away into confusion as he blinks stupidly at Pidge. More specifically, at her hair.

“Uh –”

“If you say even one word about the distressed state of my hair,” she cuts him off with a furious scowl –although, looking at it closer, it’s a little tame compared to the usual. She cradles her laptop to her chest protectively, almost as if she’s expecting it to be snatched out of her grip at any moment. “I will chop off all of _your_ hair in your sleep and put it in your food goo.”

Lance knows that to be a very real threat. He once woke up from a nap to the sight of Pidge standing at the end of the couch he’d been sleeping on, a pair of decidedly way-too-fucking-sharp scissors in her hand, and he’s sure she tilted her head in the exact way she knew the lights would reflect off the lenses of her glasses. He barely escaped with his life that one time, all because he’d foolishly thought teasing Pidge for the literal rat’s nest her hair could wrangle itself into would be a good idea.

Instead, he says, “Actually, I was going to say it looks good on you. Allie did it, right?”

“How’d you know?”

“I think I’d recognize my sister’s handiwork when the only other person who could do it is Allura, and as far as I’ve seen, that’s not a hairstyle she’s ever done before, or knows.” He hums thoughtfully. “Maybe hairstyles are like, super specific to alien cultures that have hair follicles like ours. Y’know, like one species has this hairstyle that no other does. Or maybe there’s an intergalactic agency of hairdressers who monitor which species are allowed to have which hairstyle. Hey, do you think Allura would wear that style? ’Cause her hair’s curly and all.”

Pidge gives him a suspicious look, waiting for a line that would enable her to aim a sharp elbow at his stomach amidst his rambling. When it doesn’t come, and he just smiles at her, she turns back to her laptop.

“Yeah. Allie was in my lab to see what kind of stuff I do, and kept teleporting my laptop away until I agreed to let her do this,” she gestures vaguely at her hair braided in so many twists it’s impossible to count them all, pulled back in a loose but pretty bun at her nape. “To, I quote, ‘make me resemble a human being again, because that is what you are, be proud of it, even if humans are shitty a majority of the time’.”

Lance winces on Pidge’s behalf. “Yeah, sorry about that. Allie can be like that sometimes.”

Pidge shrugs. “’S’kay. I don’t mind it half as much as I when it thought she was going to magically dye it. At least it’s not in my face.”

He nods sagely. “That is true.” He pauses. “But you know when you open them up you’re gonna have curls for days, right?”

She turns to blink owlishly at him. “What.”

“This is the style Allie does on her hair to make sure her curls stay in their pattern.” He leans toward her and picks up one braid, examining the two-strand twist as if it’s a diamond and he a rare gem collector. “Yeah, these curls won’t go anywhere unless you brush ’em out. And then you’re gonna be a literal cloudy puffball. And if they’re not curls, it’ll be at least really, really wavy.”

Pidge wrinkles her nose distastefully at the thought of making the effort to actually put a brush to her hair. “Should’ve cut it shorter,” she mutters, going back to her customary lightning-speed typing.

“Wouldn’t have stopped her.” He pipes up helpfully.

He peers over her shoulder, wondering if this’ll be one of the very, _very_ few times when he actually understands what he sees on her screen –but nope, nah, it’s just a mess of somewhat coherent lines of coding. There looks to be a video file minimized at the bottom corner of the window that’s open, but he can’t quite make out what’s on the paused screen.

He leans back with his arms propped up behind him, turning his attention back up to the swirling nebulas and galaxies of the star-map. “What’re you doing here, by the way?”

Pidge grunts irritably. “Allie and Hunk took over my lab. He’s showing her some of his own work. I think he’s trying to figure out if he can build a small explosive fuelled with magic.” She reaches around and hugs her laptop to her. “I love my laptop, I _need_ my laptop, and Allie’s a little…”

“Manically volatile?”

She clicks her fingers. “Yep, that. So. Here I am.”

It’s nice, that she came up with an excuse like that. Unfortunately for her, he knows her. _She_ is the one more likely to kick Allie and Hunk out of Team Punk’s lab than she is being the one getting chased off by magically charged threats. Allie may be a little (a lot) explosive at times, but Pidge can be just downright terrifying.

He would ask her how she found him, but then again, this is Pidge. She probably hacked her way into accessing the security cameras all over the Castle two hours into their space adventures, all the way in Arus.

He grows sombre at the reminder of how long they’ve spent in space; how long they’ve been away from home. He remembers what Allie said about Pidge’s mom and Mami, about Hunk’s moms suing the Garrison for trying to cover up their disappearances.

Were they doing all that because they truly believed that they would find their missing kids one day, or were they doing it because it’s all they can do with so many questions and no way to answer them?

“She’s trying to distract herself.” Pidge says suddenly, without warning. Her fingers stop their near-manic stabbing of the keyboard. She doesn’t look at him, eyes fixed on the screen in front of her, but he knows she’s not paying any attention to what’s on it whatsoever. “And…and I think you are, too.”

His stomach turns in over itself, and he wonders if it’s possible to projectile vomit a la Hunk style when you haven’t eaten anything in too long. He doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t know what he can say.

Or, no, that’s a lie. He _could_ say something; he could lie, throw her off the scent, say anything other than the truth which is that he’s more hiding than trying to distract himself. But then, Pidge maybe be only marginally better than Keith at being around people, but she can sniff a lie coming from a mile away.

He’s not too sure that elbow won’t jab at him for lying if he tries.

“Or, like, you’re avoiding thinking about it by avoiding us,” she continues, still stoically staring at her laptop screen. “Because we know now, and you’re trying to avoid us because you’re afraid we’ll treat you differently, or some bullshit like that.”

Lance laughs. It’s too nervous, too wobbly at the edges, to pass off as nonchalant. “Didn’t know you were interested in psychoanalysis, Pidgey.”

“Then why are you avoiding us?” she asks. Her voice shakes just the slightest bit.

“I’m not –”

“Yes, you are!” she spins around, the smoothness of the floor making the slide easy. She pins him with an intense amber glare that holds him arrested on the spot, stunned, when he sees the faint glimmer of what are definitely tears there. “You missed breakfast, lunch, dinner, _and_ all the snack times in between. We haven’t seen you since Coran said the Ladenian maybe’s the same one that started a war with your people. We didn’t –we didn’t see you for almost _two weeks_ when you were –when you were captured by that fucking demented Radnak, and then for a whole other two weeks when you were in the healing pod and we didn’t know if you’d make it back out.”

One tear slips out, rolling down her cheek. She reaches up shoves her glasses up to nestle in her hair as she scrubs furiously at her face, trying to possibly wipe the very existence of those tears away. Lance wants to move, to say something, anything to help, but he can’t move. The sight of Pidge crying right in front of him is so foreign that it’s shocked him still, only able to sit tense as an immobile statue, gaping at her and hating himself for not knowing what to do to make her feel better, to make her stop crying because a crying Pidge is just –it’s not right, it’s _not right._

“We didn’t –we thought –we almost lost you, Lance.” she hiccups, and her hands still, heels pressing into her eyes, but it doesn’t stop the tears from flowing. “I know I always complain about your stupid jokes, but the Castle –it was so quiet and I missed it, I missed _you._ We couldn’t even be in the same room without you there to keep us together, and t –here was so much –so much _blood,_ Lance. I couldn’t even see –see the white on Keith’s armour when h –he brought you back, and then no –now we have you back but it’s like you’re still not here, and it fucking _sucks,_ Lance. I _hate_ this.”

_It’s like you’re still not here._

_It’s like you’re still not here._

**:you were never here to begin with:**

_“It’s like you’re not even_ here, _Lance!” Allie sobs, her face crumpled from the force of her cries as she grasps his limp hands in hers, so tight that he’d worry she’s about to break his bones, if he cared. Golden sparks fizz up the length of her arm from the force of her emotions, her desperation. The sparks crackle up and down her hair spilling over her shoulders in loose curls like a shower of yellow crystals. “Please, Lance, just look –_ look at me!”

_He looks down at her hands twined around his. At their hands, genetically identical yet so, so different. Her hands are beautiful, if a little calloused from her training. She keeps her nails short, and no dirt cakes the moons of her nails. Her palms are rough, a little, and he can feel the raised bumps of a scar that’s healing, skin a light brown that looks like dusted bronze glinting in the sun._

_His hands are covered in red that drips sluggishly on his blanket. He blinks slowly at them, and the red vanishes._

**:you will never wash it off but we can help you we can make it hurt less want us to help we can help just let us in only a little bit only for a little while:**

_He raises his head, fixing his wandering stare to Allie’s desperate eyes. She’s trying. She’s trying so hard to bring him back to_ this _moment, to keep him away from_ that _moment, that moment that he remembers so clearly that it’s like he’s slowly being strangled by the memory of it. That moment when he,_ he, _speared his arm through Alex’s chest and watched the gold essence of his brother’s magic crawl up his arm and into_ him, him _who was stealing his brother’s magic like he_ owned _it._

_“I’m sorry.” His voice is bland, empty, dead. He doesn’t know what he’s apologizing for. There’s so many things. “I’m sorry.”_

“Don’t say you’re _sorry!”_ Pidge yells at him, and he snaps back to reality, unaware that he’s been saying ‘I’m sorry’ on repeat. He blinks in surprise to find that Pidge isn’t sitting cross-legged next to him anymore, but kneeling right next to him, not touching him, but her ire burns right through his stupor like a laser beam through a thick, shaggy carpet. “You’re not –you shouldn’t be _sorry,_ just stop –stop avoiding us so much! Stop acting like we’re gonna hurt you if you say something! Stop _running away_ from us!”

“I’m –”

She gives him a withering glare before he can even finish. “I swear to fucking god, Lance, if you say ‘sorry’ one more fucking time I am going to fucking yeet you across the entire fucking Castle.”

That does it.

In the split second of silence after she finishes, Lance’s eyes widen as the inconceivable image paints itself behind his eyes. Lance, all gangly noodle limbs and a good foot over Pidge. And Pidge, hauling him in the air with impossible strength and just hurling him across the room and some weird shit making him fly straight across the Castle from aforementioned impossible strength, his scream fading into oblivion as he races away.

Pidge must have the same image in her head, because, even despite the way her eyes glimmer with a sheen of tears she’s fighting to keep from falling, a smile cracks her lips in a little canyon over her face. She hiccups, and it turns into a water chuckle, and Lance is just –he’s just _gone._

He starts laughing, laughing hard, so much harder than he can remember he’s laughed in so long. He bends over, arms curled around his stomach as he gasps in laughter with tears stinging his eyes, and he doesn’t know what the tears are for. Pidge is laughing too. She sounds more like she’s cackling, but she’s laughing wholeheartedly at the pure insanity of the picture she painted with her threats in meme code.

Their shared laughter bounces off the walls of the bridge, echoing them and making it sound like they’re laughing louder than they are, but he doesn’t care. The quiet anxiety and worry that’s been coiled tight around his chest, like a length of crackling livewire, loosens when he laughs. By the time they quiet down to low, amused chuckles, they’re both flat on their backs, holding their sides. Lance feels like he can _breathe_ again, like there isn’t fire pulsing in his gut that burns through any sliver of happiness too quick for him to even enjoy it before it’s snuffed out.

“Shiro would take all your money for that,” he sniggers. She swore four times, _four times,_ in one go. They’d neeed to get another swear jar just for this one instance. “That’s gotta be record for you.”

She shrugs, laughter still in her voice even as it fades. “I’ll just win it all back from him anyways. He’s shit at poker.”

“I bet he’d get, like, astronomically better if it was strip poker and it’s his dignity at stake."

She hums. “Probably. I’d still win.”

Probably.

Pidge sits up first and pushes her glasses back on her nose, perhaps to hide how red her eyes are. She sighs as she looks at her laptop, abandoned by her side, and reaches over to shut the lid. Then she lifts her knees to her chest and wraps her arms around them, tipping her head back to look at the star charts Lance had been scrolling through before she came into the room.

“Look, I –I know you’ve been through a lot. I mean, I don’t think I _know-_ know, ’cause I haven’t lived it or anything, but it’s some pretty heavy stuff that you’ve had to go through.” She tightens her arms around her knees. “I know I don’t get it, but I want to. Every time I try to imagine myself in your shoes, to imagine Matt having to go through what you had to…I can see why Allie’s so protective of you. But she’s not the only one, Lance,” she glances at him. When he doesn’t say anything –because, again, Pidge is acting so unlike Pidge that he’s mind has ground to a complete halt and he just doesn’t know what to do or say –she continues. “We all care about you. Fuck those voice and whatever they’re saying otherwise. We care about you, and it –it hurts that you’re just –I mean, I get you need space, but at least _tell us_ that. Don’t run away every time you see one of us as if we’re gonna shoot you or something.” She smiles. It’s wobbly, but it’s better than the tears. “You’re not alone. Don’t pretend to be.”

Lance looks away from the earnest expression colouring her face so unashamedly. He looks at the stars, spinning on obliviously. Then he looks back at her, brow furrowed.

“Did you just quote Sayid from Lost?”

“I regret nothing. The real question is, how did you guess that? That’s from the first season.”

“I have marathoned that show because of Allie’s obsession with it six times, Pidge. _Six. Times.”_

Pidge smirks. “Try beating Matt’s eight.”

He whistles at that, shaking his head, equal parts impressed and mildly concerned. His body moves on automaton as he reaches an arm out to ruffle her hair, and though it doesn’t work as well on account of the neat twists, his hand is already on her hair by the time his brain catches up to what he’s doing. He almost freezes in place, waiting for something –what, he doesn’t know –but all he gets is the usual Pidge ducking under his hand and slapping her own over her head to protect her hair from him.

She scowls at him. “These took an hour to do. At least let them stay a while before you mess them up, idiot.”

He smiles, dropping his hand. “All you gotta say is that you like them.”

“I don’t.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

She just gives him a disgruntled snort as she pulls her laptop back to balance on her outstretched knees. She flips it back open, and green lines of code immediately flood the screen. She taps at the keyboard and the coding disappears, replaced with whatever it is she’s working on now.

They stay like that for a bit. It’s a different kind of quiet to the one he shared with Hunk yesterday. Hunk can just peacefully remain in one spot for hours on end, if he thinks it’s what his friend needs. Pidge is like a condensed ball of electricity, constantly needing to do something, always needing to put her hands and brain to use. But she can still simply _be_ there, and that’s what counts, he guesses, so long as she has something to focus on.

Lance turns off the star-map in favour of looking out at the real stars beyond the bay windows. Pidge continues to stab at her keyboard. The mice snort a couple of times as they roll around in their sleep and knock into each other, only to be sent rolling down the floor before coming to a stop, all while blissfully remaining asleep.

He kind of envies them for that. He hasn’t slept a wink since he got out of the healing pod. He’s not an idiot –he knows what he went through, and though he adamantly refuses to let his mind wander down _that_ dark corridor, he knows that it’s probably traumatic enough to leave its footprints in the shape of nightmares.

He already didn’t sleep much before because of nightmares that hounded him with teeth of steel. What’s it going to be like now? He doesn’t want to find out. But the lack of sleep is starting to wear on him, making him sluggish, weighing his eyes down until he finds himself drowsing off and cat napping in the weirdest places (not Pidge-in-the-vents level weird, but pretty close) before snapping back to wakefulness with a thundering heart and sweat dripping down his nape as ghoulish shadows slither away in his mind.

His sighs. Damn mice. They get to sleep so peacefully, and he has to watch them.

He looks at Pidge. He can’t see it so clearly, but even though her eyes are a little swollen, lined in painful pink, at least she’s not crying anymore. That had been just as painful as it is when Allie cries.

“I know you said not to say it, but I am sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel that way,” he offers quietly.

Pidge gives him a bland look before looking back at her laptop. “I might not be able to do it myself, but I can definitely hack the gladiators into throwing you around for me.”

He groans long-sufferingly. “Why you gotta do that, Pidgey? They already throw me around in training. Don’t prolong my suffering.”

“Woe is you.”

“You gremlin.”

“Noodle.”

“I think you mean ninja sharpshooter.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I am!”

“Uh-huh.”

“Pidge.”

“Uh-huh.”

 _“Piiidddggeeee,”_ he whines, bursting up from where he lies on the ground to wrap his arms around her shoulders and prop his chin on her head, pushing down hard enough that she’s not so much resisting as she is ducking her head down as she tries to flail around to throw him off.

“Lance, get off!”

“Say it.”

“No.”

“Say it, Pidgeotto, c’mon,” he frees one hand to prod at her cheek. He can feel the wide grin on her face, even if he can’t see it. “You know it’s true.”

“You’re delusional,” she deadpans, a second before she jabs her sharp elbow into his side –not too hard as usual, but enough that he yelps indignantly and lets go, pouting at her as he rubs his side.

“I’m an injured man, you evil creature! How dare you hurt me.”

She rolls her eyes. A tiny, barely there smile twitches her lips. “You’re fine, you big baby.”

He puts a hand to his chest. “Your callousness for my well-being wounds me. Truly, it does.”

“Sure. I bet Hunk’s chocolate-chip cookies would make you feel better.”

His eyes widen.

“Chocolate-chip cookies?” he whispers in awe.

Pidge smirks. “Almost chocolate-chip cookies. They’re alarmingly pink, and apparently still in the first stage of testing –but that’s why you’re the taste tester, right?”

“Say no more, Pidgeon. I have our mission for the rest of the night.” He jumps to his feet, ignoring the way the room tilts alarmingly as vertigo sweeps in before everything settles back in its gravitational place. “We are going to taste test the latest choco-chip cookies this side of the galaxy.”

“I mean, they’re still in the first stage,” Pidge reminds him, but she’s already scrambled to her feet, laptop shut and tucked under her arm, turning to head for the doors ahead of him. “And they’re pink. They could be poisonous or something.”

Lance shrugs, stuffing his hands in his pockets as his long legs easily match up to her shorter strides. “Guess Coran’ll have to save our sorry hides, then. As usual.”

Pidge sighs, shaking her head morosely. “Poor Coran. Why do we do this to him.”

“’Cause I’m a Noodle with a bottomless pit of a stomach, and you’re a relentless, remorseless gremlin who needs sweet things to balance out your appalling dependency on alien coffee.”

She thinks about it. Shrugs. “Good point.”

Lance grins widely, and even the irritated swirling of the voices whispering across the bruised landscapes of his mind aren’t enough to ruin this moment of reassurance Pidge has given him, cementing what Hunk had said back in Blue’s cockpit.

They know about him now. But…things are…okay?

Yeah. They’re okay. They will be.

He hopes.

↭§↭

Days after the astonishing revelations levelled at the team by both the twins and Coran, the team gather in the lounge sans the aforementioned three. Coran insisted on running another series of diagnostic tests on Lance, while Allie is curious about how the Altean plans to do that, since all she’s seen so far are the healing pods (she’s shown a lot of interest in Altean healing methods, something that flatters Coran to no end). Allura remains on the bridge, running through the Castle’s systems and ensuring no Galra interference are within vicinity after she and Shiro indefinitely suspending Voltron activities pending Lance’s recovery.

She keeps in touch with the Blade and updates them on developments as necessary, so that if Voltron is needed, they’ll still be there. Whether or not forming Voltron itself will be what’s needed is a bridge they’ve all decided to cross when the time for it comes.

When she’s not talking to Kolivan, Allura’s fury over the crimes committed on Earth by the Beast, a Ladenian, is unmatched as she spends hours practically locked on the bridge, ‘diplomatically’ unleashing verbal hellfire on the Ladenian ambassador assigned to her for allowing one of their own people to cause so much havoc on another planet, exiled or not. Nothing Coran says has managed to get her out of there, and the only thing he can really do is remain by her side and advise her on the best way to move forward.

The whole situation is made that much more frustrating by the fact that the ambassador appears to have been issued a gag order, probably by whoever’s in charge on the planet. Whenever the Beast’s name, Rylox, is mentioned, he clams the fuck up. If Keith weren’t so irritated by it all he’d commend the ambassador for somehow withstanding Allura’s formidable ire for so long.

Things have been quiet the last few days. Allie and Lance spend a lot of time together, with Pidge and Hunk (sometimes Keith when the curiosity drives him enough to) sometimes joining them and asking questions about their world back home. Coran’s been frequently doing check-ups on Lance, something that concerns Keith, but he knows the Altean would say something if it was really bad. Shiro and Allura monitor Galra movements while the Princess talks to the Ladenians and Shiro keeps the other Paladins on their feet by training them.

 The lack of activity beyond group and individual training has Keith antsy, restless, even though he knows they need this break, all of them, and he knows it’s a good thing that the Galra are lying as low as they can be, considering they’re a race of conquering aliens. That’s not a very high bar, but it’s better than being constantly attacked left and right by ion canons and battalions of fighters. Keith takes what win he can.

As Keith takes a seat beside Shiro he feels relatively certain about why Shiro wants to talk to all the Paladins (barring Lance obviously). He was honestly just waiting for this to happen, watching the way Shiro watched Lance and how he acts around the others, how _normal_ he’s being, like he wasn’t just tortured to within an inch of his life, like practically his whole life hasn’t been spent with a target on his back by some freaky white walker-esque alien that used his body to kill his brother.

(Keith’s still trying to wrap his head around that one.)

Everyone is settled down on the couches, loose, but tense. Pidge is next to Keith, on the very same couch Lance magically lifted up into the air just over a month ago. There’s a pensive look in her eye, far more distant than he’s used to seeing on her. Hunk sitting on the other couch but still close. Even though he seems the calmest of everyone here, now that Lance is back, safe and sound, Keith’s still caught him nervously watching Lance when he thinks no one’s paying attention to him, as if he’s afraid that his best friend will simply blink out of sight and just disappear again.

Shiro leans forward slightly and braces his elbows on his knees. His Serious Face and Serious Posture game on and turned up.

“We haven’t had much chance to with everything that’s happened,” he starts slowly, carefully. “But we need to talk.”

“Is this about Lance’s fight in the arena?” Pidge asks softly. She’s wary about this, with good reason. No one really wants to have to face the fact that Lance either thinks so lowly of them, or worse, so lowly of himself.

Shiro nods morosely.

Keith was right.

It doesn’t feel good to be right.

“Do you all remember what the Nargannian said when they were impersonating us?” he asks.

Everyone nods. Keith can’t quite stop his lip curling at mention of the alien that pushed Lance so far by using him _like that,_ by using _their_ bodies, by using Lance’s _friends,_ like that.

Hunk shifts, picking at his thumb, not looking up at any of them. “He thinks I –he thinks I’m disappointed in him.”

Like a morbid domino effect, Pidge follows on the heel of Hunk’s pained words, muttering heatedly, “He’s not useless. He’s _not._ I don’t –I don’t understand why he even think that, because he’s _not.”_ The look in her eyes dares any to argue.

No one does.

Keith doesn’t say what he painfully remembers the fake version of him saying. Even if he could force the words stuck in his throat out, he wouldn’t. He won’t voice them aloud, because they are the furthest from the actual truth of the matter. Saying them with his own voice and not the voice of someone impersonating will feel like he’s admitting something that just isn’t true.

Shiro doesn’t push him to say anything. Maybe he knows what thoughts are running through Keith’s head. Maybe he doesn’t. It wouldn’t surprise Keith if he did –Shiro has known Keith long enough to at least guess as much.

Shiro turns back to the others. He swallows once, twice. “And he thinks I see him as incompetent.” He looks at Hunk. “You’ve known him the longest out of all of us, Hunk. Do you have any idea why he would think something like that of himself, why he would think that’s what we feel about him?”

Hunk hunches his shoulders in. “He has some self-esteem problems, but –but I never realized it was this bad. He didn’t –sometimes he comes to me when he needs to talk about stuff he has trouble with, and I know that he wants to be wanted by others, to feel like he’s worth something and matters to someone, but I didn’t think the insecurity was to this extent.”

“Hold on,” Pidge straightens her glasses on her nose, frowning. “Shouldn’t Allie be here? No offense Hunk, but she’s his sister. She’s part of his world and probably knows him better than anyone.”

“That’s true,” Shiro affirms. “And we will go to her. But to begin with, we need to figure this out on our own. Edmynun didn’t take on her form –they took on _ours._ They used Lance’s fears and insecurities against him, and those fears took on our forms, not hers. He doesn’t doubt her, but clearly there’s something we’ve been doing wrong, or haven’t done at all, that’s made Lance think the way he does. Even to the point that he’s never come to us about it.” He gives them all a gentle yet stern look. “Allie can help us, yes, but right now we need to figure out what we’ve been doing wrong for ourselves. We need to figure out what needs to change. We can’t expect to be a fully functioning team in all respects if one of us feels like they don’t belong.”

Keith bites his lip to keep from shouting that Lance does belong –so why can’t he see that? Why does he think he’s a disappointment to Hunk, an annoyance to Pidge, a placeholder teammate to Shiro, and a –a _cargo pilot_ to Keith? For fuck’s sake, Keith’s caught himself gaping in awe at the way Lance fights, the way he flies, the easy way he is around the others, even total strangers. No one can do what Lance does better than Lance himself. So why doesn’t he see that?

_“They are violent, and full of hatred, and tied to him and his magic in a way that they can’t be removed.”_

_“He distracted me by filling my head with these voices that are…not pleasant.”_

“It’s the voices, right?” Keith asks. It’s the only explanation he can think of. “It has to be.”

Hunk frowns thoughtfully. “He didn’t actually tell us what they say to him, did he?”

Shiro shakes his head, a similar frown wrinkling the scar across his nose. “No, he didn’t. Maybe Allie knows?”

“’They are violent, and full of hatred, and tied to him and his magic in a way that they can’t be removed,’” Pidge says, tapping her bottom lip with her thumb before pushing her glasses further up her nose. “That’s what Allie said after the…the video.”

They all turn to her with surprised blinks at her total recall.

She shrugs nonchalantly. “I have echoic and eidetic memory.”

“So much makes sense now,” Hunk murmurs, shooting her an impressed eyebrow raise.

At least Keith knows why she’s so good at poker now.

Pidge shrugs again before growing more sombre once more. “But what are we supposed to do against that? Even if we make sure to show him that we all love him and need him, how will we know if he _believes_ it when those voices are probably constantly saying the exact opposite?” her frown deepens as she adds, “That’s a common problem with children who have some kind of mental or emotional trauma, you know, especially if it has to do with family. If they’re told, repeatedly, and for long enough periods of time that they’re one thing, it can take so much longer than that to heal the damage that’s done. And if the voices are responsible for this, how are we supposed to know who he believes?”

“Then we need to find out more about them.” Shiro says.

“Yeah, obviously, but _how?”_ Hunk presses earnestly. “This is _magic,_ Shiro. We’re all way out of our depth here. We don’t even know where that depth ends and begins.”

The corner of Shiro’s lips tick up slightly. It’s a surprisingly hopeful expression amidst their bleak circumstances. “We’re in an Altean castleship, Hunk. And ever since the Princess fought Haggar, she’s been researching about the orphic side to quintessence. There might be something she can find. Coran, too, probably.”

Everyone nods at that agreeably. Considering their appalling lack of knowledge about Lance’s world, it’s the best they’ve got.

Something is still bothering Keith, though.

“What about the Ladenian?” he asks. “Rylox. One of their people is terrorizing Lance’s people and is hunting him, Shiro. If he’s the same guy the Ladenians exiled, how the hell did he end up on Earth?”

“Allura is looking into it on her end,” Shiro says, calmly, as if it wasn’t obvious that that’s the first thing she thought of doing from the moment they found out _why_ Lance didn’t want to go down to Ladene.

Also, they all saw Allura’s ears flick in the same way Allie’s does when she’s irritated. The ear-flickering thing is probably the closest they’re ever going to see of Allura losing her composure about something, which is more than they usually do considering Allura’s been trained to conceal what she’s truly thinking since she was a child. Very handy in diplomatic settings.

The others nod in acquiescence of that, knowing they can trust Allura to do her best to get to the bottom of this whole mess. But Keith –he blinks rapidly when he makes the abrupt connect between Allura’s diplomatic skill and Lance’s now-obvious ability to completely hide what he’s actually feeling and thinking. Allura, she has the excuse of being a Princess trained for it.

Lance? Before, Keith wouldn’t have made the connection, but now that they know his story, he can see it clear as day.

Lance is literal fucking _royalty_ in his world, to his people. It’s maybe not so obvious as Allura’s, but he’s probably grown up under microscopic inspection from his people because of his bloodline, not to mention the power Allie’s told them he can wield (when he’s not tanking out on his magic, that is). He probably didn’t have any other choice but to learn how to mask his thoughts and emotions behind a big grin and flirty wink to derail their attention from focusing on _him_ to focusing on the idiocy he throws at them.

Keith’s stomach twists nauseatingly as he’s struck, yet again, with the sick feeling of realizing that he judged Lance way too harshly when they first met, and maybe things between them have gotten better a little, but whatever weird relationship they have now, it’s nowhere near good enough for Lance to feel like he can actually be open with –with _any_ of them.

Because he feels like he’s not needed. Like he’s a burden to them.

That…it hurts. Something squeezes tight in his chest, and he doesn’t understand it or why, but it _hurts._

Keith resists the urge to drop his head in his hands and groan, wondering just how many ways someone can be so oblivious that they’d think that. All Lance would need is to just _see_ how the whole team fell to shambles without him, how just not having him there with them had cracks splintering through the bonds that keep them tied together and make them more family than team.

“So…” Hunk presses his fingertips together before spreading his palms on his knees as he looks at Shiro unsurely. “What do we do now?”

“For now, we lie low on Voltron activity until Coran gives Lance the go-ahead.” Shiro answers without hesitation. “We try to avoid any confrontation with the Galra in the meantime, and answer only urgent distress signals we come by. Hopefully those won’t require forming Voltron, and if they do…” he trails off. He sighs. “We’ll figure something out if it comes to it.”

“And Allie?” Pidge asks. “I mean, there’s a war going on for her people against actual, literal demons.” Her nose scrunches, as if she’s still trying to come to terms with that inconceivable fact. Aliens? Sure, she can get behind that. Ghosts? Highly unlikely, but the possibility is still there. Demons? What the fuck? “And have you seen the way she always has a knife somewhere on her? Like Keith, except she’s a lot jumpier about to.”

He only sends her a half-hearted glare at that, but doesn’t say anything, because it’s true. He used to carry his luxite blade because it’s his only connection to his mother, and the only thing he had left of his father, too. Now he carries it for the same reasons, still, but also because he feels off, unbalanced, without it somewhere on his person, like a safety net he can rely on falling back on.

Allie’s proven to be pretty much the blade equivalent of trigger happy with her daggers, and with her bow and arrow (that was Lance’s? How did they gloss over this, by the way? And, clearly, Lance knows his way around a bow and arrow…so why isn’t that the form his bayard takes?) it’s no different.

“I talked to her about it yesterday,” Shiro says. “She knows that we can’t go to Earth yet, not with the Galra scouring the galaxies for any hint of our movement. If we try, we could lead them straight to Earth, and she knows that’s not a risk we can take.”

“So, what, she stays here?” Keith asks tightly.

Shiro gives him an unreadable look before nodding slowly. “Yes.”

“Seems to me that she doesn’t mind it too much,” Hunk adds. “I mean, I think she wants to go back, but at the same time Lance is here, and she hasn’t seen him in over a year.”

_And he’s the younger one, he’s her baby brother, and he’s in the middle of another war and was just rescued from being tortured to within an inch of his life because of it._

It goes unspoken, but it’s there. Keith isn’t sure Allie wouldn’t still pick to remain on the Castle rather than return to Earth –at the very least just to keep an eye on her brother. He and Allie might not see eye-to-eye on a number of things, but he understands what it’s like to have to force yourself to try living with the gaping hole in your chest left behind by someone who wasn’t supposed to ever leave you alone.

Shiro sends them off to their rooms not too long after calling the meeting, realizing that no matter how much discussion they do, there’s no real answer or solution to any of this until they find out more about the voices. This all starts with them, and it’ll have to end with them.

Until then, Pidge promises to send whatever relevant information she scrounges up from the Castle’s archives to their tablets when she finds something while she works on figuring out what the hell the Galra have got up their sleeves that allowed them to interfere with their Lion bonds back on Ladene (a project she’d put on hold after the…whole thing happened), while Shiro mentions something about Coran looking through the Castle’s physical library for answers. In the meantime, all they can hope to do now is be there for Lance and prove the voices wrong at every deceptive turn.

Keith doesn’t know if any of it will be enough, and he doesn’t know what they’ll have to do if their efforts prove to not work because the voices have had their claws buried in Lance for too long for just their simple words and actions to keep Lance from believing them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm feeling as nervous to post this as I did when I first posted "nobody has to know (nobody but me)". I know this chapter was probably boring, not much happened here, but don't worry, things will definitely pick up speed in the next chapter, and I hope you're ready for that because the days of peace are over because they're boring and I don't know how to do them. What did you think of this chapter, though? It's probably shit. :(
> 
> Part of why I took the break, not including the mental health stuff, was that I came to a sort-of block/stump about how to continue. Like, I have 3 distinct story arcs I want to go through for this fic, and as soon as the first arc ended with Lance’s rescue, I did a thing that didn't help my frustration at all and just regularly stared at the screen with a completely blank face because HoW dOeS oNe Do TrAnSiTiOnS oF pLoT tHrEaDs
> 
> As always, comments are warmly appreciated! Thank you so much for reading, and see you next chapter! :)
> 
> [Tumblr](https://www.azurehyn.tumblr.com) || [Wattpad](https://www.wattpad.com/user/azurehyn)


	14. am i gonna bend (am i gonna break)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What comes after isn’t as simple as everyone would like it to be, except no one even knows that because Lance isn’t saying anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember when I said in the last chapter to be prepared for shit to happen in this chapter? Yeah, I take that back. While shit does happen in this chapter, it's not the shit I intended, which will be coming sure-fire in the next chapter :) Originally it was going to all be in this one chapter, but...I do have some limits, and I figured 13k words is enough for one chapter. I'll try to get the next chapter up soon, but no promises on when because honestly idk when. BUT AGAIN, don't worry, it's gonna be slow but I will finish this fic.
> 
> "am i gonna bend (am i gonna break)" - Will I Make It Out Alive, Tommee Profitt ft. Jessie Early

Look.

Lance isn’t an idiot. He’s not. Sure, he certainly acts like it a hell of a lot, and he probably is –ok, that’s beside the point. The point is, Lance isn’t _actually_ an idiot.

(He got into the Garrison by winning several scholarships. Not even the voices can take that from him.)

He knows he’s been through a lot of crap in his life. He _knows._ He _lived_ it, so of course he knows. He has to deal with the aftereffects of it all every single damn day –but that right there is the point. He _deals_ with it. He has his coping mechanisms –whether they’re healthy is debatable –he has his little tricks and ways to at least look normal even if he doesn’t really feel it.

(The real question here is if he even knows what ‘normal’ is anymore.)

But the way everyone’s treating him like normal yet still hovering? The way they treat him like fragile glass that’ll break if they handle him too rough? It’s annoying. They (sort of) know what he’s been through. They know he’s managed it well enough for years now. They’ve also known him for the last year, and seen that he’s perfectly freaking fine. And they’ve been there to watch him slowly recover, physically at least, building himself back up to being a worthy Paladin who deserves to be on the team. So what makes them think he’ll suddenly collapse on them now?

“Yes, Allura, I’m only taking Blue out for a spin. Come on Princess, if I don’t she’s gonna wither away! Well how do you know giant robot lions don’t atrophy?”

“Yep, this much is totally a-okay, bossman. I’m barely doing anything, seriously, it’s just a couple of targets. Close combat…um, okay. Wait, no, don’t use the arm! I yield!”

“Allie, I can carry these books to your room. I’m not an invalid. Child, I swear to the gods if you tele – _ALLIE!”_

“I can make it to the dining room without tripping and falling to my death. Hunk, that was a joke! Don’t cry, I’m not going to die!

“Aw, Pidgeon, that’s so sweet of you, I thought you wanted –DON’T BE SNEAKY AND GIVE ME THOSE HEADPHONES I NEED THEM! I’M SHOUTING BECAUSE YOU’RE – _PIDGE GODDAMN IT –_ Shiro, no, please, I have no money for the swear jar. I WAS TRICKED.”

“Seriously? This is the what-number test you’re doing now? I came out of the pod two weeks ago. It’s been two. _Weeks._ I’m pretty sure I’d notice if something was wrong by now. Um, yeah, my back’s fine. I can do a backbend if you –oh, you can do one too…Coran, people are not supposed to bend like that.”

“Keith? What are you doing here? I’m late? Aw, mullet, that’s so nice of you to wake me up –the fuck do you mean I owe you. WHY IS EVERYONE TRYING TO TAKE MY MONEY?”

Honestly, Pidge is the only one who treats him relatively the same as she always had (barring Keith and his newly picked up habit of banging on Lance’s door to get him to come to breakfast. He didn’t used to do that before but Lance isn’t exactly complaining, because it’s not all that bad seeing that face first thing in the morning. Keith could work on the scowl though).

She still sits on his back when he’s lounging in the common room.

She still only barely allows him to annoy her enough to make her yawn and remember that hey, she is human, and humans need sleep, and no, Altean caffeine is not a substitute for at least seven hours of total unconsciousness.

She’s not quite so forceful as she used to be when demanding his help with lugging random pieces of machinery around for her when Hunk isn’t available for it, and she’s picked up the disconcerting habit of asking _him_ if he’s sleeping, but all in all she’s pretty normal compared to everyone else’s overbearing behaviour.

Allie’s the same, too, if a little more overprotective than usual (he’s not sorry for snapping at her for trying to get him to slow down with Blue), but basically the same as usual.

The others have also started doing this Weird Thing. Complimenting him for the littlest things he does, sometimes actually _joining him_ in teasing others instead of just groaning like usual, asking for his opinion more often, including him more than he remembers anyone ever doing so.

Keith offers to teach Lance some close-quarters combat moves that are relatively quick and easy to pick up on, and though Lance is benched from doing any actual training, it does nothing to stop Lance from listening to Keith’s advice (and if he sneaks up to the observation deck to watch Keith train at night when everyone else is sleeping, well, who can blame him? He’s just being a diligent student and taking good notes for reference).

Hunk has started asking Lance to actually help him with the cooking instead of only tasting it. Shiro and Allura more often ask him about what he’s noticed in all the nights he’s spent studying the star-charts, something everyone on the ship has known about for a while. Coran tells him more stories about alien races that have similar quintessence-based abilities that Witches seem to have. Pidge explains, unprompted, what she means when she goes off on her techno-babble so that nowadays, more often than not, he actually _understands_ what she’s talking about.

He doesn’t get it, but…it feels nice.

(The voices taunts and snide comments only seem to get more vicious the longer this goes on for, so he’s not sure which is better –the before when he had to do everything he could to keep up with the talents of his teammates, or the after where they’re including him more but making the voices more ferocious in their hatred.)

The problem with _that,_ though, is that Allie and Pidge have bonded.

That’s right.

They’ve bonded.

And now everyone is suffering (Lance isn’t quite so salty about this because at least he’s not the only one).

Before, it bothered him how different Allie seemed from how he remembers her. Even with the war against the demons, and with all the people they’ve lost, and how closed off Allie can be with people she doesn’t know or trust, she’d still always managed to retain a light. It’s hard to see, especially when she works to keep you from spying it, but Allie’s not naturally the stoic and silent type. She likes being around people as much as he does, she likes talking, she likes playing around and teasing and having fun.

The girl he saw after waking up from the healing pod isn’t exactly who he remembered. This girl is thinner than before. She’s quieter, more cautious and watchful of every minute move of anyone or anything around her. She doesn’t initiate conversations or start teasing anyone unless they do it first, and even then it’s tame compared to her no-filter attitude from before.

(The no-filter has become a broken filter, though, because she’s still blunt as ever.)

It reminds him of an injured animal, backed into a corner by a pack of predators, warily eyeing them and trying to figure the best way out, the best way to keep from being eaten alive in two seconds flat. He hates it. He hates seeing how different his sister has become in the year he’s been away, and he _hates_ knowing that something bad happened, something bad enough that Allie’s been putting off telling him about it.

But now that he’s awake and safe (as safe as you can be in the middle of an intergalactic war, to be honest), some of who he remembers her to be has come back –not completely, and it’s a slow-going process, but at least he recognizes his sister now. There’s still a darkness in her eyes that he doesn’t understand, but –she’s trying. She’s trying, he’ll give her that.

Still. He could do without the pranks.

Because see, that’s what happens when you put Allie and Pidge together. There’s one thing that hasn’t changed –the goddamn pranks.

Allie is more tempered than Lance, not quite so loud and flirtatious, but what she lacks there, she more than makes up for in pure mischief. She’s _worse_ than him in this regard. You can’t grow up in a household like theirs, with a family like theirs, with the ability to use magic, and not come out with a sense of humour that is borderline homicidal (if death by confetti counts, at any rate). While Lance (sometimes) holds Pidge back from absolutely mauling everyone with a ‘harmless little prank’, Allie is different. She’s exactly like Pidge, no holds barred.

The twins, naturally, were a nightmare growing up, and it only got worse with adolescence. The twins, naturally, are a menace to their family and everyone who knows them.

But when you throw Pidge’s ingenuity into the mix, trying to survive the prank wars that ensue is probably harder than fighting the Galra. Probably. Maybe. Possibly.

The day Allie and Pidge discover and unite over their shared love of pranks is the day everyone in the Castle learns to double-check their belongings, their rooms, and make sure there’s nothing remotely suspicious about any surface they’re going to sit on.

That still doesn’t stop Hunk from biting into a scaultrite crystal cookie he’s sure Allie used illusory magic on to make it look like anything other than a scaultrite crystal cookie.

It doesn’t stop the gladiators in the training room from chasing Keith around the room and absolutely _showering_ him with alien confetti that takes two separate baths to get rid of (Lance positively delights in picking out the stray bits of confetti in the shaggy mop of mullet he still spies at breakfast the next day, to Keith’s adorable grumbling thanks).

It doesn’t stop the weights Shiro uses –yes. Yes he lifts, because why the hell not, this is Takashi-hot-damn-Shirogane for god’s sake –from just suddenly not actually weighing anything at all for the next few hours.

(Jury’s still out on whose idea that one was.)

It doesn’t stop Allura’s hair turning neon pink (she rocks the look) and Coran’s moustache _actually animatedly moving on its own_ when he’s not talking, and occasionally literally sparking with electricity when he grows excited about random things no one really understands. Sure, they’ve all teased him about his moustache, but to see those jokes come to literal and semi-sentient life is downright terrifying. Hilarious, but terrifying.

Again, no one really knows who’s the guilty party on that one. Lance would put his bet on Allie coming up with the idea and Pidge concocting some sort of hair oil she switched out with Coran’s usual to get the job done. Or it could be the other way round. Really. With those two, you can never be sure who’s worse, or if there even is a better one between the two. It’s all about perspective.

And Lance?

Hell no.

Like hell does he escape. Allie’s as close to the normal he remembers as she’s likely to get while stuck on a giant alien castleship, so there’s no way he makes it out of the prank wars unscathed.

He goes into one particular stall in the shower, he comes out blue. _Entirely_ blue. The worst thing is that it doesn’t wash off like Keith’s confetti streamers did –no, him turning blue lasts an entire three-day period.

Blue loves it, if her audible mechanical purrs and mental chuckles are any sign. Lance is less than enthused about it because what the hell is whatever they used to make him blue doing to his pores _goddamnit_ –right up until he discovers he becomes practically invisible in the Altean pool where everyone treks one day to relax.

Pidge and Allie learn to regret their choice of prank for the blue boy when he repeatedly terrifies the everliving shit out of them both, and they can’t figure out how to tell where he is so long as he remains underwater. Pidge’s shrieks of terror when he pops up behind her will forever be music to his ears.

Yeah. They should have thought about his prank a little more.

(He keeps the scares on Allie to a minimum though –she’s got a real mean right-hook punch. He would know. He’s been on the receiving end of it for multiple reasons. It’s not fun, because does getting punched in the face with a fistful of firecrackers sound like fun? No, and that’s how Allie punches.)

For all intents and purposes, during day hours, everything’s fine. It’s suspicious how little activity there is on the Galra-having-no-chill-and-horrible-timing-and-constantly-attacking front, but the Paladins take what few miracle-born breaks they can get, even if it means more training in the meantime (except for Lance. Coran nearly burst a vein that one time he caught Lance holding his bayard, _in Shiro’s very capable presence,_ and thought he was trying to train when he’d only just gotten out of the healing pod a week earlier. Which, he was, but chill, Coran). He finds it a little weird how no one talks about what they’ve learned…like, _no one,_ besides them asking about Witch history and culture. He makes no comment on the oddity.

He’s not complaining, though he does often see Allura walk out of the bridge with a thunderous expression on her face after extended periods of time locked in there with Coran, and sometimes Shiro. He remembers Hunk telling him how angry Allura was about a Ladenian running around killing people, seemingly almost practically _allowed_ to do so by the irresponsibility of the Ladenians who exiled him.

Lance never asks about it. Call it denial, but like…denial’s a very nice place to be. No unnecessary stress, no unwanted anxiety –honestly, living the way he does, what more could he ask for?

Instead, he spends as much time as he can with the others. He hangs with Team Punk. Picks up training tips from Keith and Shiro’s daily sparring sessions even if he’s been banned from getting back into training until another week is up. Walks with Coran around the Castle or helps with maintenance and listens to his endless treasure trove of stories, Lance sometimes adding anecdotes about his own people. Helps Allura either plot out points on the star-map for Galra military movements that Kolivan provided them with, or play with the mice. Hangs out with Allie, talking about home, or plots devious pranks with/against her.

(She’s insistent on learning Altean when she’s not training to keep her skills on par. It’s a little sad that it’s taken him this long and his twin sister’s dogged determination to start learning the language, too, considering how beautiful and lilting it is. Kind of like music with no instruments.)

He does everything he can to not be alone because he knows alone is when the voices are strongest. He knows alone is when he is weakest, when it’s easier for him to crumble under the weight of the pressure that is being a defender of the universe, of the guilt that is knowing it was his hands that ended his brother’s lives and Lance’s eyes washed out in murderous red that were the last things his brother saw before he died.

Alone is when every facet of the mask he’s spent years carefully cultivating crumbles to ash. The mask, despite suffering serious damage in the last few weeks, still does its job of hiding him when he doesn’t want to be found –but it breaks apart when he’s alone, and he hates listening to the broken pieces clattering all around him like sad little reminders of everything that’s wrong with him.

During the day, he’s fine. There’s enough distraction to keep him occupied.

It’s night that’s the problem.

Really, Lance _was_ an idiot to think he could get away with what happened unscathed. He was an idiot to think that the scars pinking and whitening his feet and marring his back like bolts of white lightning that twinge every time he twists a little too far to the side were the only things to serve as a reminder for what happened.

The nightmares are something Lance can handle. He’s had nightmares for so long that sometimes it feels like he doesn’t know what a normal night of sleep is. What he doesn’t know how to handle is that he’s having trouble figuring out when he wakes up.

When he jerks awake from a nightmare, he _thinks_ he’s awake, until something horrible happens and he snaps awake all over again, for real this time, but even then he’s not sure if he’s really awake. The only thing that brings him out of the darkness that plagues his mind is the glowing yellow runes on his skin where Allie drew them to bind his magic.

Yes, he’s still mad about that. But if it’s the only thing that grounds him to reality, he’ll keep it. Fuck it, he’ll redraw it again once it’s off if he has to, not to inhibit his magic, but to remind him of when he’s awake.

(It’s better than the _other_ thing he used to do when he needed to ground himself in reality, reminder of it drawn in his skin in white-brown lines like the ones on his back.)

(He is a walking, breathing scar, knitted together by hundreds of smaller scars that make a warped whole.)

Lance doesn’t know if it’s a blessing or a bad thing that he can’t remember what his nightmares are about beyond a sick twist in his stomach when someone says something that vaguely reminds him of one. He always used to dream vividly, but when the nightmares started when he was fifteen, everything just faded into static.

It’s like a horrific case of sleep paralysis induced by the nightmare, only he can’t remember why he can’t move to begin with. When he wakes up the intensity of it all fades, but it never completely leaves him alone. There’s always something left behind, buried deep in his bones, a fear he can never shake off, no matter how loud he laughs, how bright he tries to smile, how much he flirts and jokes and prances around and pretends like nothing’s wrong.

This is his normal, and everything is fine.

Until it’s not.

↭§↭

This is their first team training since Lance’s capture and subsequent rescue, and Lance is…nervous.

Okay, you know what, fuck that. He’s fucking _terrified._

There’s some irony in this, considering Lance is the one who’d started wheedling at Allura that he was ready to train after almost three weeks of sitting on his ass and watching the others do what he didn’t exactly want to admit he missed doing.

But really, can you blame him? There’s only so much enforced ‘rest’ and idleness he can handle, and he’s running out of face masks to do. Mostly because Allie’s stolen at least half of them since she came, but Lance wasn’t too bitter about that, because she looks like she could use it. Not that she’s hideous or anything (Lance has been on the receiving end of too many not-idle threats from his sister for any such comments), but she’s the one who introduced him to his own skincare regiment, and she doesn’t look like she’s been following it for…a while.

He has a sneaking suspicion that it has to do with why she was armed to the teeth when he saw her, and why she still wears the baggiest sweaters she can find in the many storage rooms scattered around the Castle so that she can comfortably walking around with her daggers tucked in the sleeves and no one the wiser to their presence mere inches from them.

(Pidge seems to have developed some kind of radar for them. He’s caught her yelling at Allie to leave the daggers at the door before entering her lab or not come in at all. He wonders how Pidge can just _tell_.)

The Paladins start the session off with simple, basic bonding exercises. None of the mind-meld bonding, though –even Lance can more than admit he’s so far from ready for that. No, instead, they do easier things, things Allura apparently researched on from what limited information on humans the Castle’s archives could provide.

It goes…relatively well.

“Keith, I swear to the gods, if you don’t catch me I’m going to turn _you_ red, to match that hot-headed temperament of yours.”

“Would you just fall already?!”

“Aw, mullet, I didn’t know you feel that way for me.” A dramatic hand to the chest as he swoons, and, without further warning, falls directly back into Keith’s thank-fuck-they’re-there arms. Lance grins widely, tipping his head back to look at Keith scowling down at him –and Jesus have mercy on his poor bi soul, there’s the _tiniest_ smile twitching at his lips, like Keith’s fighting off the smile with everything he has. Lance tries very hard to ignore the strength he can _feel_ in those arms holding him up as he winks and says, “If you wanted me to fall for you, all you had to do was ask.”

Keith promptly drops him, and Lance yelps indignantly as his ears are met with Pidge and Allie’s cackles at the uncoordinated mess of limbs he becomes when he lands on his ass on the floor.

They switch places, and despite Lance’s teasing to not catch him after Keith unceremoniously dropped him, he still does catch him. Allura makes them all do rotations so everyone has a turn with each other at least five times. He catches Keith every time, and Keith catches him every time.

Lance pretends to be totally unaware of the impish grin on Allie’s face from up in the observation deck when she makes out the faintest blush on his tan cheeks, and he only ignores her because he knows Shiro would give him the stink-eye for flipping her the bird, even if she is his twin sister.

Then Allura gets them all to stand in a circle facing each other, shoulder to shoulder. Everyone has to put their right hand out and grab a random hand of someone across from them. Then they have to put their left hand out and grab another random hand from a different person across the circle. Within a set time limit, the Paladins have to untangle the knot of arms without releasing their hands. The end result is an admittedly hilarious bout of shifting and wiggling and laughing and yelping at sharp elbow jabs.

( _“Pidge!”_

“It wasn’t me!”

“Who else has elbows that freaking sharp?!”

_“Lance does!”_

“Hey!”).

(Shiro looks so tired after that one. Pleased that they were actually able to untangle their arms without letting go, but Space Dad Tired As Fuck And So Done™.)

Coran flat-out refuses to let anyone (Lance) do the maze, so Allura improvises with that one. She gets Allie to help by throwing around random pieces of illusory objects on the floor in the middle of the training room while the Paladins stand on one end of the room. Allura pairs them off (okay, no seriously, Lance is now _convinced_ that Allie’s conscripted the Princess into…whatever weird plan he can see forming in her head, because there’s _no way_ he can be paired the first time round with Keith three times in a row) and gives one Paladin in each pair a blindfold. Since there’s five of them, she takes part in the exercise as well, pairing herself with Shiro for the first round.

Lance and Pidge subtly fist-bump at sight of the faintest of blushes that grace Allura and Shiro’s widely-smiling cheeks, while Hunk chides them like an exasperated mother hen and Keith just smirks amusedly when Pidge gives him her other hand to fist-bump.

One Paladin has to lead the blindfolded Paladin across the room without letting them touch any of the objects strewn about, using verbal instructions only. The difficulty is pretty much the same as the maze, because even though they don’t face muscle spasms via electrocution –bless –just even barely brushing up against one of Allie’s objects on the floor, of varying sizes (there is an actual king-sized bed there), will have it vanishing instantaneously.

And it’s all timed.

(Allie times it, and she refuses to tell Lance or _any_ of them who had the best time, because apparently that wasn’t the objective of the exercise.)

Then the infamous scavenger hunt happens. By that point, no one is surprised.

Allura provides them with five decidedly weird looking Altean materials she claims to be just ordinary tools, and tells them that they’ll have to search the training room for them. She puts a twist on it though –she sends everyone but Coran and Allie out of the training room, and when they’re called back in to the training room, it’s to find that it Coran has morphed the deck from the normal arena-esque Altean model into a holographic-yet-still-tangible _jungle._ An actual, honest-to-the-damn-gods, creep-crawlies, fallen-logs-in-the-middle-of-the-path, pine-kneedle-covered-floor, seemingly impenetrable jungle.

Altean tech, man. It’s out of this world.

( _“Lance!”_

“That was a good one and you know it!”)

She tells them that Allie utilized her particular skills (read; illusory magic is the perfect camouflage) to hide the items in the training room/jungle. The incentive to finding the tools is the chance to pick what planet they’ll land on when things settle down long enough for them to have the much needed _vacation_ (pay attention; _vacation,_ not Lance-was-captured-by-a-probably-definitely-insane-Galra-commander enforced break).

Yet _another_ spin on what _should have been_ a simple scavenger hunt is that, instead of finding the tools she assigns as the Black tool, the Yellow tool, the Blue tool, the Red tool, and the Green tool, she switches it up so that they have to find the tool of whoever’s standing to their left.

Of course Keith is standing to Lance’s left. Of course.

Really, he’s not even surprised at this point, not after Allie pointed out how, “Your self-proclaimed rival doesn’t seem to see himself as your rival, hermanito, and you don’t either. Look at how you’re always next to each other. ¿Qué? Don’t give me that look. Chico, you know what I’m talking about.”

(He does know what she’s talking about.)

By the end of it, Hunk is the one who finds all the items first. Lance tries to wheedle how he did it so quickly out of him, but Hunk just shrugs nonchalantly and says ‘I have a nose for these things’.

Yeah, Hunk that doesn’t help Lance any.

The entire endeavour of bonding exercises, from start to finish, takes the Paladins three and a half hours. Everyone is tired by the end of it, so Allura calls for a lengthened break in the form of lunch before they were to return to the training room to resume the actual combat training Lance had (wrongly) thought they’d start off with immediately. They eat food goo because Hunk didn’t have enough time to prepare anything better than that.

Lance isn’t able to eat as much as he knows he should, thanks to the bundle of nerves that nestle comfortable and _tight_ in the pit of his stomach where he would have preferred to put more food in, thanks.

It’s not that Lance _doesn’t_ want to resume combat training.

Really.

He’s been in constant physical training since he was thirteen years old. Sure, he doesn’t train as much as Keith does –he gets the feeling that Keith trains so much more to try and not think about things than solely to get better –but no matter how much he whines and gripes about it, he _loves_ the adrenaline the pumps through him like the most addicting drug (but thankfully non-lethal because he ain’t having none of that shit), and he loves the strain of his muscles stretching and getting stronger, and the way his body feels as he moves and dodges blows and swipes and hits.

But there’s a part of him that’s scared, too.

He’s not scared of flashbacks. He knows that combat situations can give rise to them, but he knows how to deal with them, has had more than enough practice in making sure they don’t rear up like f-ugly snakes to hiss and bite at him when he least expects or wants it. Sometimes it still happens, when he slips and forgets where he is, when his mind snaps from _here_ to _there,_ but for the most part he can control it.

No, that’s not what he’s scared of.

He’s scared that getting back into fighting will remind him enough of the arena, enough of Edmynun’s alien body shifting and becoming smaller and more _human,_ enough that the voices will slip into the crevices of his broken mind that he desperately tries to parade around as whole, and steal the control he fights every waking moment to keep a hold of.

But then, all he has to do is look out to the bay windows Coran has opened up, to give them a view (for what reason, he’s not entirely sure. How exactly does one appreciate the view when one is rolling on the ground, all sweaty and panting for breath while sparring?), and think about all the lives on the stars he can see and the stars he can’t, lives that aren’t strong enough to fight on their own against overwhelming odds, and he remembers _why_ he has to get back into fighting.

He remembers that all those lives can’t face such odds on their own, but he can. Or at least, he’s part of something that can. One day someone better will come along and take his place, do better than him, but until that time comes, _he’s_ the one that’s here, and _he’s_ the one that has to fight as best he can to protect those who need it most.

Because he knows what it’s like to be the one that needs protecting, and not get what he needs, and be broken by the odds that hunt him to this day for something he cannot give without it stripping him down to the core and leaving him shattered in pieces.

He ran away from one war. He can’t do it again.

“All right, team,” Shiro claps his hands together to get their attention before putting them on his hips, an easy smile on his face. “Tomorrow we’ll work with the gladiators. For today we’ll start off easy, with paired sparring in rotation so that everyone goes against each other at least twice before we’re done for the day.”

By that point, Lance wouldn’t put it beyond Allie to get _Shiro_ in on whatever game she’s got playing by getting Allura to partner him up with Keith all the time. He’s _expecting_ it, so to say he’s surprised when Shiro turns back to look up at the observation deck is an understatement.

“Allie!” he calls, waving. Lance blinks at him stupidly for a moment, then looks up to see Allie awkwardly waving back, an equally perplexed expression donned. Shiro gestures at her. “Come down here for a bit!”

Okay. This should be interesting.

By the time Allie makes it down to the deck to join them, everyone’s just as confused as Lance and Allie are –except Allura, because obviously she knows what’s going on.

Allie’s dressed more simply than the other Paladins are in their armour. Her hair is worn down, curls spilling past her back in brown and blonde highlight as she approaches them and passes under the lights. She’s wearing her own pair of tights with flashing grey strips up the sides of her calves, and a baggie pink hoodie that does nothing to deter from how she moves like a lethal feline predator.

“Um,” Allie says eloquently as she shifts her footing beside Lance, uncomfortable under the weight of all their gazes. “Hello?”

Shiro smiles at her in a placating manner. “Relax, Allie. I just wanted to ask you a favour.”

Oh. Oh this will definitely be interesting.

“Okay,” she says warily, crossing her arms –probably in an unconsciously defensive manner. Allie has grown mistrustful of anyone asking her for a favour after Lance had done the same for the most utterly ridiculous reasons one too many times. “What do you need?”

“I want you and Lance to be the first to spar.”

Back the fuck up, Lance wants a refund –this isn’t what he was expecting.

“What?” he squeaks. The others look just as confused, although Keith…he looks like he has an inkling of an idea as to what Shiro’s getting at. “Allie and me?”

“Why?” Allie echoes his surprise, her ears having risen up a little. “Isn’t this a Paladin team training?”

Shiro nodded. “Yes, it is. But I want to get a better feel of Lance’s capabilities. Don’t get me wrong,” at this he turned to Lance with a small, reassuring smile. “But I get the feeling that you’ve been holding back a little in training.”

**_:now you’re a liar:_ **

Lance is opening his mouth to immediately retaliate, to who he’s not sure, but he pauses. The team know about him now. They know that he trained with Witches who fought against demons to protect his kind. They’ve _seen_ him do it. What’s the point of lying now, again, when he doesn’t need to?

He doesn’t want to be a liar.

Lance searches Shiro’s eyes for a brief moment, looking for some kind of irritation, some kind of anger that Lance has been, essentially, playing himself down during team trainings. All he finds there is easy acceptance –that’s been there since Lance spilled his guts about his past –and curiosity. That curiosity is echoed back at him by the other Paladins, who all look just as interested as Shiro, and Allura, too. He glances up at the observation deck to see Coran leaning over the controls dashboard, no doubt just as curious.

“Yes, I do believe this would be beneficial,” Allura comments. She nods at Allie. “I’ve seen how you train, and if it’s true that Lance has indeed been holding back, it would prove immensely helpful for us to watch you two. You could even help the rest of your teammates improve!”

Only Allura could make it sound like him sparring with Allie is akin to Jesus walking the earth again and handing out baskets of handy electronics instead of fish and bread.

“Uh,” he says. “I don’t know what you expect, though? I mean…I might just possibly maybe have been holding back a teensy weensy little bit,” he shoots Allie a death glare when she scoffs derisively behind him. Her face morphs to the picture of wide-eyed perfect innocence as soon when his stink-eye lands on her. He turns back to the others. “But I’m still not good at close-quarters combat. Like, I’m best from a distance.”

**_:even that isn’t as good as it should be because you’ll never be as good as they need:_ **

“Like with a bow and arrow?” Keith asks. There’s something there, simmering under his voice, as if he wants to say something but doesn’t know what, exactly, he wants to say.

Lance cocks his head, eyeing Keith curiously for a moment, before nodding slowly, trying to stifle the effect the voices are having on him. “Yeah. Like that.”

“I think it would still be a good idea to see how you fight with no reserves, Lance,” Shiro says before Keith can make another comment. “So that I can get a feel of how you really fight, and we can more appropriately focus efforts in team training where they need to be.”

“Hey, what about out on missions?” Pidge pipes up, peering at Lance suspiciously. “Were you holding back then?”

“Uh, no.” Lance says bluntly. “That’s like a sure-fire way to get yourself killed.”

_“What you did on Ladene….that was very impressive, Blue Paladin. Stopping an explosion of that magnitude is quite a feat. Imagine how my interest was piqued when I saw what you did through the eyes of the Galra soldiers you killed.”_

_Every single time the team have to kill someone, a Galra, even when they don’t want to, is it possible that Druids are watching their every move that way?_

**_:they do what needs to be done unlike you:_ **

Maybe they sense the shift in his mood, because Pidge, where she would have shot off a dozen more questions in quick succession before, keeps her silence now as she simply nods and settles back on the wall Keith is leaning against.

A part of him feels guilty, for that –if he hadn’t been so stupid to run through his magic to the point that he got captured, that he couldn’t even protect himself because of it, then Pidge wouldn’t have to be checking her near-insatiable curiosity just to avoid possibly setting him off.

He sighs a little. When he glances at Allie, she’s watching him with her head tilted a little to the side, waiting for his final say-so. She’s already got a hairband clamped between her teeth, hands pulling her hair up and yanking it back into a swinging ponytail behind her, snapped firmly in place with her hair tie. His brain hurts just looking at how tight she’s done it. At the look on his face, she grins sharply.

“Aw, hermanito,” she coos. “You afraid I’ll beat you again?”

Lance whirls on her, squawking indignantly, eternally grateful that she doesn’t comment on the little frown he’d felt ticking at his eyebrows. “Again? What do you mean, _again?_ I won five out of five last time we sparred!”

She puts on a dumb look. “Oh? Do you mean before I knew any better and you were at the obvious advantage because I was sick before we knew it?”

The younger Paladins snicker behind him as Shiro, with an amused chuckle, says, “I take it that’s a yes?”

Lance yanks his bayard out of its holster at his hip. “That’s a _hell yes.”_ He points the open-ended curve of the deactivated bayard at his smirking sister. “You have offended my honour. Prepare yourself for some a –bum-whooping!”

Hunk and Pidge outright laugh at his aborted attempt to keep from swearing out loud in Shiro’s presence (he really wasn’t lying when he said he has no money for the swear jar). Keith looks like he’s fighting off his own laugh as he bites his lip, and Lance has to fight with _himself_ to make some flirty comment about how hot he looks when he does that.

Instead, he turns around and shoves his bayard into Hunk’s startled hands, then spins back around and heads straight for the wall that has a hidden compartment where sparring weapons are kept.

“Uh, Lance?” Hunk calls out. “Don’t you kinda need your bayard or something?”

“Nope,” he replies as he hits the button and watches a section of the wall slide out, showcasing the display of practice weapons within. There’s training daggers, practice katana-looking swords, what look to be polypropylene swords, synthetic gladius, practice guns with little boxes of blanks neatly placed next to them…

Lance grins as he plucks out a wooden staff, maybe an inch or two shorter than his full height, before tapping the button and watching the sectioned-off piece of the wall slide back into place. He walks back to the waiting Paladins, swinging the staff at his side. “I’ll be using this.”

He doesn’t miss the look on Keith’s face when he sees the staff –he looks like he’s just swallowed a sour lemon.

“Allie –” Shiro cuts himself off from asking her anything when he sees that she has both her daggers out, loosely gripped in her palms.

She throws her daggers in the air and they flash in sparkles of glow, hovering mid-air as she pulls her baggy hoodie off in one smooth motion, leaving it on the floor by the wall. Underneath it she’s wearing a simple black tank top that showcases the lithe strength in her body. She holds her hands out, palm up, and the daggers drop to land with the hilts clenched in her hands again.

She smiles genially. “I’ll be using these.”

“Are you sure about that?” Hunk asks nervously. “I mean, those are actual blades,” he gestures at Allie’s daggers with a worried flutter of his free hand. He points at Lance’s chosen weapon. “And that’s a wooden staff.”

“If you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll get hurt.” Keith adds, a frown pulling his dark brows low enough to almost, _almost,_ give him a monobrow.

He somehow manages to make even _that_ look attractive. Bloody Keith and his bloody mullet and his violet-navy eyes and his –

_Yeah Lance can we not._

Lance only smirks at him as he spins the staff one more time at his side before gripping it easily in both hands. “Don’t worry about me, mullet. I can face her toothpicks just fine.”

“Famous last words, Lance,” Allie calls, walking towards the centre of the training room and waving a lackadaisical hand behind her.

“Lance, are you sure you don’t want your bayard?” Allura asks. She doesn’t seem quite so sure of this idea anymore. “It won’t hurt her, if that’s what you’re worried about. There’s a feature on all bayards that makes them non-lethal in their combat forms.”

“I’d be more worried about _her_ hurting _him,_ actually,” Pidge mutters, shooting Allie’s back a confused glare.

Lance’s cocky grin softens to a gentle smile in the face of his teammates’ worry over him.

“Guys, chill. It’s okay. Allie and I have been practicing together since we were kids.” He says reassuringly. He glances back at Allie, smiling when he sees her tossing her daggers up and down in boredom as she waits for him, her back turned to them. The blades are lined in a thin sheen of yellow that coats their surfaces like molten gold. “You see that? She’s dulled her daggers. When she lands a hit, they won’t cut.”

The Paladins look only slight mollified at that.

Lance shoots them his signature finger guns, a confident smile to top it off, and spins around and walks after Allie. She’s watching him with a calculating look in her eye as she idly flips the dagger in her left hand up and down, the blade spinning end of end twice before she catches it by the now-blunt tip and throws it up again, all without looking at it.

When he reaches her, she lifts her chin slightly and asks, “I can give your bow and arrow back, if you want.”

He blinks at her for a moment before shaking his head, easily slipping into Spanish. “No, Allie. I gave it to you when I left that life behind. Besides, I’m better with a sniper rifle than with an arrow.”

She looks like she wants to say something else, but she just shakes her head wryly. “Your choice.”

Lance hums vaguely as he begins unstrapping the pieces of his armour, starting first with his chest, laying it gently on the floor just off-centre, the armour braces and shinguards quickly following.

“Wait, Lance,” Shiro calls out, taking half a step towards them. “What are you doing?”

“Levelling out the playing field,” he answers smoothly. He glances back at them to see the visible worry on their faces has ratcheted up a notch. He points at Allie. “She’s not wearing any armour, and she’s dulled her daggers. It’s only fair.”

Shiro frowns, looking a little unsettled by how… _at ease_ Lance is with this whole thing. It’s probably a jarring reminder to them that this has been a normal thing for him to do since he was fifteen; he has lived his life in a constant state of warfare since he was a child. Maybe he wasn’t exposed directly to it, but he’s had to live through its consequences.

Shiro sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “All right. But remember, guys,” he warns. “This is just a simple training session. Not a payback one.”

Lance narrows his eyes. “Why do I feel like that was specifically aimed at me?”

“It is.”

Lance rolls his eyes. “Thanks dad.”

“I’m not your dad.”

“Sure, dad.” Pidge snickers.

“From an entirely objective viewpoint, you’re an actual Space Dad, Shiro,” Allie offhandedly comments.

Shiro’s answer is just this weird strangled sound as Keith smirks and puts an assuaging and definitely-mocking hand on Shiro’s shoulder.

“Hey, before we start,” he says quickly, turning back to Allie as she rolls her shoulders in preparation for their ‘spar’. “What’re the chances you’ll take the runes off? Y’know, we can put on a glitzy show for them.” He tips his head back in gesture to the waiting Paladins. At the instantly wary look she dons, he quickly adds, “C’mon, it’ll be cool! And my magic’s almost back to full power. A little fun won’t hurt.”

She gives him a stern glare, then sighs heavily and waves at him. “Come here, let me check.”

Lance grins and skips over to her, crossing his fingers as he turns to the side and lets Allie put her hand on the side flightsuit covering his stomach, where the runes she’d drawn are. She doesn’t touch him, just lets her hand hover over where the runes are located. A warm yellow glow permeates from her open palm, and her eyebrows quirk a little.

She steps back, shaking her hand as if she’d just dunked it in water. “Another two days.”

A little squiggle of panic worms through him at the thought of them not being on his body anymore, not there to ground him to reality and tell him _hey, you’re awake, surprise motherfucker!_ and not still stuck in a hellish dreamscape. He clamps down on it before the panic can turn into a fanged attack on him, and makes his face as comical as he possibly can as he gapes at her.

“But it’s almost done!”

“Lance,” she says in a severe, no-nonsense attitude. “Two more days. Don’t test me on this.”

He visibly, exaggeratingly, deflates. He lets his shoulders droop as if he’s Atlas struggling against the weight of all the world’s sky, and pouts at her. _“Fine,_ you big meanie.”

Allie sighs, rubbing her temple like Mami does when her kids are being particularly bothersome too early in the morning. “You man-child.”

“Technically, I am still a kid.”

She stares at his logic. “You’re nineteen!”

He grins. “Keyword; teen.”

“Gods,” she groans. “Let’s just start.”

She makes the first move, without warning. Lance knew she would, because even if they’ve spent a year apart, she’s still his twin sister, and he knows her.

She comes at him with her daggers flipped, sharp ends pointed downwards to her elbows and aligned with her forearm. He kicks his staff out in a blow that would have struck her right in the side. Only, it’s met with Allie’s daggers as she hooks them over the moving staff and freaking _flips_ over it, landing on her feet smoothly with her back arching as her hands nimbly spin the daggers around so their ends are facing outward again, the staff skittering over their edges as she forces it up and away from her body.

Lance spins around once to carry to momentum of the push, pulling the staff closer in to his body as he bends while spinning around once more, bringing the staff skimming a foot above the ground. Allie ducks, rolling forward. He sees her coming straight for him and takes a step back. By the time Allie’s sprung to her feet, daggers at the ready, he’s already brought the staff close to hold it over his chest and block the blows. Allie grins at him, arms held above her as she pushes down harder on where her blades meet his staff, testing to see how far he’s willing to go.

With one resolute push, Lance shoves her away, and she goes with the motion so that they are a few feet apart again, smoothly getting her bearing. She’s careful to keep at enough of a distance from the reach of his staff. The only way he’ll get a hit is by going in close –which is exactly what she wants.

“Damn, Allie,” he whistles, smirking sharply at her as they circle each other. “You’ve got some moves on you nowadays.”

She grins, flipping the dagger in her left hand so that the end is pointed at her elbow once more. “Thought you said you wanted a show.”

He scoffs. “Yeah, and you’re stealing it.”

She rolls her eyes. “Well, Fae _are_ the more physically superior race.”

He hums vaguely at that. Her bias is showing. “Uh-huh. And you know what else they taught as at the Order?”

Without warning, he runs at her. Allie’s eyes widen, and she sidesteps –but that’s exactly what he was expecting. A second before he would have sailed past her, he instead goes down on his knees and skids past her, twisting the staff behind him and hooking it so that when he does pass by, the staff trips Allie. He swiftly rises to his feet just in time to see Allie fall, landing on her back with a jarring _thud._ She blinks blearily at the ceiling for only a split-second before she’s back on her feet again, and staring at him, wide-eyed.

“They taught us how to fight Fae, too.” He says, with an innocent smiling grace his face. Demons, Fae, Warlocks, humans –anyone who had a potential to be a threat to Witches were considered as such during combat training in the Order.

Allie…doesn’t look like she knows what to do with that. She was trained by other Fae, not in the Order like him. No one outside of the Order knows that they look at anyone who isn’t a Witch as a potential threat that may need to be dealt with without hesitation, at a moment’s notice.

They spar for a few good minutes that way, Allie landing a couple jabs on him, Lance swiping a few of his own. Sometimes, when he spun around or dodged a blow, he’d catch glimpses of the looks on his teammates’ faces as they watch the fight.

Astonishment prevails amongst them all. Shiro looks amazed, Hunk awed, Pidge stunned, Allura shocked, and Keith…he looks excited? Impressed, like Shiro, but there’s a definite undercurrent of excitement in his eyes as well.

Maybe now that he doesn’t have to hold himself back for fear of being caught with skills he shouldn’t have because of hiding his past…maybe now he and Keith can train together sometimes, one-on-one. Like, Lance’s close-quarter combat really isn’t all that good, and Keith’s honestly one of the best fighters he’s ever come across. It’d be a good idea to get some more tips and practice in with him, right?

All in the name of Voltron and saving the universe, of course.

(He can practically hear Pidge and Allie’s chorusing voices singing, “Lance, you lyin’ thirsty hoe.”)

(He wouldn’t even be able to honestly deny if it.)

Really, he doesn’t know why he was so terrified of this. Hell, he _missed_ it. He sure as hell doesn’t miss the reason why they fight in the first place, but he can’t deny the rush of adrenaline that fuels the exhilaration at moving like this, at watching his opponent’s every miniscule move, at feeling the burn travelling along his muscles. It’s like he’s been hit with sudden nostalgia that he can actually _do_ something about, instead of just wallowing in it.

But soon the buzz of fighting gives in to the desire of wanting to _win._ It’s always been a toss-up to guess who’d win whenever he and Allie sparred before…before everything went sideways into shit. Some days Lance would crow in triumph over winning, other times Allie would smirk evilly at him after winning because they’d betted on it, and when Allie wins a bet, you’d better start running.

“C’mon, Allie,” he taunts, spinning the staff around his waist in dizzying gold circles. “I know you can do better than that.”

Allie flicks her wrists, holding her daggers upright again as she smirks at him. “You have no idea what kind of training I’ve been doing.”

Lance grins. He wonders if it looks as manic as it feels. “Neither do you.”

And he leaps forward. Allie’s eyes go big in surprise at the _speed_ with which he moves, but before he can reach her, she blinks. One second she’s a mere inch away, the next she’s gone from sight.

Lance only has an instant to anticipate what she’s about to do. In the second after she blinks, Lance ducks and rolls once, coming to his feet and twisting around in one smooth move to see Allie spinning once in the air before landing on her feet with a shroud of golden sparks in the air a foot above her.

He smirks when she turns to him with an utterly _gleeful_ look in her eyes. It’s been a long time since they got to spar like this together.

“That’s an old one, Allie.”

She shrugs, flipping her daggers. “Keith didn’t see it coming.”

Lance’s eyes widen, and he glances back at Keith with a bemused grin on his face. “Seriously? She caught _you_ off-guard?”

Keith is leaning back on the wall with his arms crossed over his chest and ankles crossed over each other. When he sees the look on Lance’s face, he scowls. “I wasn’t expecting her to just vanish into thin air.”

Fair enough.

Lance pulls his attention back to Allie (because this is another thing she does; distracting her opponent and striking when they’re not prepared. Actually, come to think of it, Lance does it too) and swings the staff in circles around his waist, loving the feel of his hands dancing over the slim wooden surface, fingers twisted and turning so that he always maintains a firm grip of it even as it twirls from one hand to the other.

He sees Allie’s foot twitch, just slightly, and he already knows which direction she’s about to move in.

His intense focus on Allie’s every miniscule move prevents him from seeing _it_ coming.

No warnings alarm. No voices whisper in his head like snakes slithering across his body. Blue’s presence, something that’s always there at the back of his mind, a comforting weight he can always rely on and feels bereft without it, blips out of existence before he has a chance to figure out what’s going on. Something feels like it stabs itself into his spine, something chillingly cold and sharp enough for him to wince before shaking his head and trying to turn his attention back to the fight.

One second he’s getting ready to go on the defence, because whatever just happened cost him a second of distraction he can’t afford to pay.

The next has Allie flat on her back, daggers up on either side of her head to keep his staff from pushing down on her neck. He’s hovering over her, and he can feel it, the way his lips are twisted in a smile too big and too sharp for him, the way his eyes are wide with excitement. He can feel the undercurrent of unrestrained exhilaration rush through his body, starting to ebb, but it’s _there,_ and it’s _not his._ He can feel the way his arms shake with the effort he uses to push down on the staff, forcing Allie’s daggers back until her elbows are on the ground and the surprise and worry flowering in her electric blue eyes have given way to full-blown panic.

He doesn’t realize he can’t hear anything until the sound of his name pierces through the muffled quiet, as if someone’s stuffed cotton in his skull. His eyes flicker to the side, seeing something, someone, many someones, before they return to Allie. Her mouth is opening and closing, repeatedly, shaping a word, saying a name. It kind of looks like she’s praying.

He frowns at her, confused. What’s…what’s going on? What was he doing? What are they doing? Why…why does Allie look so scared?

Is she scared of _him?_

“Lance, _Lance,”_ she’s chanting, whispering his name harshly, her eyes blown wide in fear, arms trembling as she fights to keep her daggers in place, barring his staff from pushing down and crushing her throat. The gold sheen to the blades is gone, and he can _feel_ them cutting little nicks into the staff. “Lance, _wake up.”_

Lance lurches back, reeling when the realization of what’s happened crashes over him with all the strength of a tidal wave breaking over a shore of glass. His hand goes up to press against his chest, right over where the pendant sits just under his collarbone, and it sends out a single, weak pulse before falling silent. His heart pumps liquid metal through his body, turned to stone in his chest as he scrambles to his feet just as the others reach him. He stumbles a little, right into Keith, who just manages to catch him enough to keep them both upright.

Lance jerks forward at the unexpected touch of Keith’s hands, warm, _so warm,_ even through the thermal material of the flightsuit, cupping his elbows to keep him steady –but his skin crawls like hives at the touch. He glances back to see wide violet-grey eyes staring back at him, and there’s _so much_ there, so many words and feelings in those eyes that don’t know how to be said.

The others are saying something, he knows. He can hear the concern in their voices, the worry, but he can’t –he can’t focus on anything beyond Allie. She’s on her feet in the second he moved away from her, and she’s looking at him with so much worry, so much fucking _care_ and he hates it, he _hates_ it because he doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t deserve any of it, **_:not from her not from them not from anyone:_** because everything is wrong with him and he almost hurt her again.

He almost hurt Allie again, and he didn’t even know he was doing it until it was almost too late, _again._

And if he can so completely lose it with Allie, _Allie,_ when they’re right next to each other, when their pendants are supposedly working, then who’s to say he won’t with his teammates? His friends? His _family?_

They don’t have any magical protection. They don’t have any magic to protect them from _him._

Lance stumbles away from them, ignoring Hunk’s outstretched arm, Pidge’s concerned gaze, Keith’s step towards him, Allura and Shiro’s call to him, as he turns and makes his way to the door, desperate to just –just to be _alone,_ where he can panic over what just happened in peace, without cluing in the others of it.

“I’m –I’m gonna take a break for a bit.” He manages to force out, stumbling over his own words, over the rock that’s lodged in his throat. “You guys continue without me.”

He leaves before anyone can try to stop him. The last thing he sees before the doors close behind him are Allie and Keith’s twin looks of concern as they glance at each other.

↭§↭

The team try to continue training after Lance leaves, but the gaping hole that’s supposed to be filled with the easy laughter and bright smiles of their Blue Paladin is too large for them to ignore, further accentuated when Allie leaves barely a minute later. Allura calls an end to the training session only half an hour later, Shiro disbanding them to go off on their own endeavours while he goes to talk with Allura and Coran about something.

(Probably about the weirdness of how their impromptu recovery break from Voltron activities is actually going as it’s supposed to –without any interference from the Galra. It wouldn’t be so weird if it wasn’t, well, _weird,_ because since when has anything they ever plan actually worked? Especially where the Galra are involved.)

(Answer; never.)

Keith remains on the training deck long after everyone else is gone, sparring with the AI gladiator and breezing through from levels 1 up to 6, where it starts to get difficult. He welcomes it, though. It gives him a chance to focus on something outside of his own head, something that isn’t the confusion myriad of emotions swirling through him every time he thinks about how excited he got when he saw how well Lance can _really_ fight, how that excitement turned to concern when Lance abruptly lunged at Allie and tackled her to the floor, and the look in his eyes when they all got to him after that…

He’d looked so scared. They’ve spent a year together in space, fighting this war. There’s been so many situations where Lance should have been scared, and maybe he was, but he hid it so well behind that damned mask of his.

Something about this time was different. This time he’d looked downright _terrified,_ eyes blown wide in fright, pupils like black holes nearly swallowing the cerulean irises. He was so scared, and Keith wants to know _why._

From where the rest of the team had stood on the outskirts of the field the twins had sparred on, they’d been able to see everything. From the way Lance fought, his body moving fluidly, to the way Allie fought, like she was born to this life. They heard the twins teasingly taunt one another, riling each other up. They were moving fast, too. Lance is already a speedy person, even with all the gangly limbs (with rippling muscles and swimmer’s broad shoulders that Keith hasn’t stared at on one too many occasions, no siree, what are you talking about.)

Speed doesn’t seem to be one of the things Lance has been hiding from the team during trainings, but Allie is clearly on another level. Her feet practically flew over the floor. It was jarring to see how _easily_ Lance was able to keep up with that and all the, quite frankly, insanely flexible moves his sister kept effortlessly pulling off.

But even with being able to watch the fight pretty closely, Keith isn’t sure when it went wrong, or what made it go that way. One minute he was expectantly watching Allie to see what she would do, almost unconsciously taking notes on her fighting style so that he’d never be caught unawares the way he was when she first appeared out of nowhere –and the next Lance, had snapped forward, so much faster than before, catching even Allie off-guard. He’d brought the staff he wielded swinging in a hit that would have surely broken a rib if Allie hadn’t used her daggers to stop the staff’s path.

Lance hadn’t wasted a second. The second Allie blocked the blow, he twisted round on the heels of his foot, the staff swinging around with the motion, and he lashed out with his leg, staff tucked close. He’d moved fast enough that Allie hadn’t even seen it coming, unable to sidestep the swipe, and she tripped. Before she could get back up again, Lance had gone at her, gripping the staff on both ends, and Allie had barely blocked that blow by bringing her daggers up to stop it.

Keith growls at the unwanted memory breaching the pocket of space his head goes to when he fights. He drops low and lashes out with his right leg, trying and failing to trip the gladiator. It simply jumps above his leg, and he moves fast to retract it before the gladiator can grab it and yank him toward it to deal a jarring blow. That’s happened before, and he’s not interested in dealing with a broken wrist again.

What he _is_ interested in is beating out his emotions on the gladiator. It’s better than thinking about them and trying to figure out what they mean. That takes too much effort and he just –he doesn’t _know_ how to identify what _this_ emotion is and what _that_ emotion is and what it all means when they’re thrown in together.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been going at it with the droid. It could be for just a couple of minutes that feels like it’s been hours, or it could be hours that feel like it’s been minutes. He spins round with an upper-hand cut and slashes at the gladiator’s face. When the droid steps back to avoid the blow, he mimics it and moves forward, quickly disengaging the droid of its polearm. Once it loses its weapon, sent careening across the floor, Keith darts forward and skids underneath it’s legs, using both his bayard and luxite blade to hack at the Altean metal of the droid. He leaps to his feet before it has a chance to defend itself and, with an aggravated snarl, buries his Marmoran blade up to the hilt in the droid’s back.

A wave of electricity crackles through the gladiator’s body as it twitches in spasms, then falls still, going limp like a puppet whose strings have been severed. The droid drops through a hole that opens up in the ground, to where the workshop that fixes up the damaged bots used in training is located. Keith stands there for a long moment, panting heavily, sweat dripping down his face and sticking his flightsuit to his back in a distinctly gross way. His hands tighten around the hilts of his swords, as if he’s still waiting for something, still waiting for an opponent intent on cutting him down to come lunging at him out of nowhere.

When nothing of the sort happens, and the long moment stretches into long minutes in which he finally registers how the muscles in his arms and legs feel like they’re shaking right off his bones, he deactivates his bayard and watches his luxite blade shorten to its dagger form. He figures now is as good a time to call it quits as any, otherwise Shiro could just ‘happen’ to be taking a stroll down this particular hallway and just ‘happen’ to peek in and see Keith driving himself to utter exhaustion via training himself to halfway to death.

(It wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened. Keith is convinced Shiro’s set up some kind of patrolling schedule for himself to make sure Keith isn’t overworking himself. Either that or Pidge hacks into the Castle’s security feed –like Allura has expressly told her not to –and seen him and snitched on him to Shiro.)

With his legs trembling only a _little_ bit, he makes his way over to the wall where he left two water packs he brought with him. He leans back against the wall and slides down until he’s sitting with his legs drawn up, bent at the knee, and gulps down one entire water pack in one go. He pokes the straw through the second pack but sips at it at a slower pace, raging thirst abated from the first go. It still goes way too quickly. Maybe he should start bringing three packs instead of two.

Keith sighs and scrubs a gloved hand over his face, pushing his sweaty bangs off his forehead –to no avail. They just flop right back over. He sighs again, then twists around and falls back on the ground, staring up at the ceiling.

Now, without the mindless comfort of his arm swinging out and punching or slicing at something, his thoughts begin to wander. Almost without his conscious consent, he goes back to Lance and Allie’s spar, trying to figure out what the hell happened that could have made Lance look like that.

It can’t be the voices, right? Lance said that the necklaces he and Allie were keep the voices in control, somewhat, just enough that they can’t take over him. They were able to in the arena only because he’d left his necklace in his room, and they’d probably been at least a galaxy away from Lance when he fought in the arena. He said distance from Allie makes the necklace’s effectiveness weaker, but the two are literally living in the same Castle.

Maybe it’s not the voices. Maybe it’s the binding runes Allie put on Lance? But no, that doesn’t make sense. She’s already more than shown herself to be fiercely protective of her brother. There’s no way she’d do something to him that could hurt him, not even if it’s just the smallest possibility. She’d never take that risk.

But if it’s not the voices, and not the runes, then what?

With a sour twisting in his stomach, he thinks maybe he knows what. The sound of Lance’s screams of pain still haunt him, weeks after watching Commander Radnak attempt to whip answers out of Lance, answers he was never going to give. The sight of Lance’s back, the whiplashes that cut deep enough for him to see bone through all the torn and flapping skin, still has bile rising at the back of his throat. The smell of all that blood caking his body still makes him want to puke.

Lance’s mask may appear damn near impenetrable, and he may be fucking good at hiding his thoughts from them, but Keith can still see that, despite the amount of time he’s spending with the team and all the jokes and flirtations he throws around, Lance is struggling. The circles under his eyes look like they’ve been tattooed on, and he always seems…pale. Washed out. The vibrancy that is Lance McClain is almost enough to distract from the fact that Lance’s skin has a pallor to it that looks like it’s almost sunken in beneath the layer of his skin, coating his bones and robbing him of the sun-kissed tones that Keith has admired from afar for so long.

Keith wants to help. He does. Never before has he felt the need to reach out to somebody, to give them his hand to hold instead of using that hand to shove them far away from him, where they can’t hurt him by abandoning him after he let them in too close. He’s never felt this desperate, itching _need_ to literally just jump up and run through the halls until he finds Lance, until he just…

He doesn’t know. Even if he does that, what would he do after that? What would he say to Lance? What _could_ he even offer Lance that everyone else hasn’t already?

Allie is his sister, his twin sister, and he ran away from her.

Hunk is his best friend, and he ran away from him.

Pidge is like a surrogate little sister, and he ran away from her.

Shiro’s his damn _hero,_ and he ran away from him.

And Keith? He’s a rival. Okay, maybe they’re not exactly rivals anymore, but even so, what does he have that the others don’t? What could he offer that they haven’t already? They’re not rivals anymore, but he doesn’t know what the nature of their relationship is, and it doesn’t even matter anyways. Not when Lance is too busy running too fast for Keith to figure it out.

Maybe he doesn’t physically run away from them the way he did the first few days after everything was aired out when he came out of the pod, but emotionally? Mentally? He’s running a fucking Olympic marathon. Keith would be impressed, if he wasn’t so damn _worried_ about him.

That’s how Shiro eventually finds him a quarter of an hour later. Lying on the ground, arms and legs thrown out haphazardly, empty water packets at his feet and staring blankly at the ceiling, thoughts going a million miles an hour, yet yielding him no answers.

Keith hears the doors swish open, but he makes no move to get up or even turn his head to the side to see who it is. He doesn’t need to, though, when he hears the familiar weight in footsteps that approach him, the sound one he’s etched into memory because of how recognizable he finds it. Shiro comes to stand at Keith’s head. There’s a faint upside down smile on his face. At least, it’s upside down to Keith.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

Keith blinks at Shiro’s upside down form, blocking out one of the lights from the ceiling from beaming straight into Keith’s eyes. “Thinking.”

“You don’t do that a lot.”

Keith aims a half-hearted punch at Shiro’s calf. “Shut up.”

Shiro merely laughs, stepping away and coming to lie down beside Keith, hands clasped comfortably over his chest as opposed to Keith’s more spread-eagled, prone form. They lay quietly next to each other for a while. Keith doesn’t find any discomfort in the moment. Maybe with others yes, because he figures someone else would try to force him to talk when he’s not ready to, when he doesn’t want to. Or worse, they’d chatter about themselves and he’d have to either pretend to listen when really he’s not, or be that one asshole who just ups and walks away.

Not Shiro. He just lies there. Simply breathing. He doesn’t pressure Keith into say anything. He just stays beside him and is simply…there. Keith knows he could lie here for hours, and the only move from Shiro would be physical, to find more comfortable positions.

He’s never really been sure why Shiro does this. Sure, he appreciates it, the quiet that isn’t lonely, but it’s always confused him a little. He knows Shiro’s waiting for him to talk, about anything, but he doesn’t get how Shiro can be so patient about it.

But Keith? Yeah, no, he’s not quite as patient. Factor in an unhealthy dose of worry and that patience wears pretty thing.

“Are you worried?” he finally asks, so quiet that if not for the resounding silence of the inactive training room, he wouldn’t have been heard.

Shiro huffs out a breath. “I’m always worried. It comes with the job description. You’re going to have to be a little more specific than that.”

“About Lance,” Keith says. “Did you see him today?”

After a moment, Shiro nods slowly. “Yeah. That was…weird.”

And not in the Pidge-hogging-all-of-Hunk’s-stress-baked-cookies-and-munching-on-them-in-the-vents weird. This weird is of the Lance-is-hiding-himself-from-us-again variety. Honestly, ‘weird’ is putting it mildly.

Keith thumps his head lightly on the floor. “What do we do, Shiro? How’re we supposed to help him if he won’t let us?” he glances over when he feels eyes on him, to find Shiro is smiling at him with something very close to ironic amusement. He frowns. “What?”

“Nothing,” Shiro shrugs –as well as he can when lying on the floor. “It’s just funny you say that.”

“Why is that funny?”

“Because you’re totally unaware of how alike you and Lance are.”

Keith blinks stupidly at him. Of all things, “What?”

“You heard me.”

“How.”

“You said it yourself. How can we help him if he won’t let us?”

Keith scowls at him, then twists his head around to glare at the ceiling, as if the force of his ire at knowing exactly what Shiro’s talking about is enough to bring the whole thing crashing down over them.

“I was different,” he grumbles. He clenches his hands where they lie over his stomach to stop himself from crossing them over his chest.

Shiro hums vaguely. “No, not really. Not from where I’m standing.” Keith glances at him just in time to see the sober look fall over the vague smile that had been playing over Shiro’s face only seconds ago. “You’ve both lost someone you love, and it changed you irrevocably. That’s not something either of you can deny.”

Keith’s eyebrow twitches. “Is that what you think he’s doing? Denying it?”

“Not exactly,” he answers. “He’s not really denying it. I think he knows that’s something he can’t do. It’s more like he’s…running away from it.”

“He’s running away from all of it, isn’t he?” Keith mumbles bluntly, looking back at the ceiling. “What…what happened when he was captured, what happened with his brother.”

“Yeah.” A huff of frustration breezes out of his nose as he purses his lips. “I just wish we knew more about this Ladenian who’s been terrorizing his people. He’s been dealing with this for a long time, and at this point I think the only thing that will actually help him is closure.”

Closure…that’s something he doesn’t understand. It’s something he’s been chasing after his whole life, desperately yearning for it, for the reprieve he’s always thought it would give him and the thoughts that haunt him deep into the darkest nights, but he’s never caught it. Not once, not for anything. It’s teased him, dangling just out of reach of his grasping fingers, before darting away and resuming the endless chase in circles.

Grief, he knows well. Pain, he knows intimately. Death, he flirts with.

Closure?

Who’s that?

Before either of them can say anything, the Castle alarms start blaring in all their ear-splitting glory. Keith and Shiro flinch, glancing at each other before scrambling to their feet. Keith’s not as sore as he was after ending his training, and –not for the first time –he’s infinitely glad he trains so regularly, otherwise right now he’d be shaking on his feet rather than sprinting for the doors with Shiro on his heels.

Allura’s voice, somewhat calm and steady, sounds on the overhead speakers, and that’s how they know this isn’t a drill. It took a while, but the Paladins eventually figured out that when the alarms blare without any further announcement from Allura, it’s just a training drill. If her voice crackles through the speakers, though…

It means shit’s headed their way.

“Paladins,” she calls out. “Report to the bridge immediately. A Galra fleet has spotted us and is fast approaching. It –” there’s a short pause, like she’s listening to someone. Keith and Shiro glance at each other before nodding shortly and separating to go to their rooms and get themselves decked out in their respective armours. Keith already has his leg bracers and chest armour shoved on and strapped securely when Allura comes on again, and her voice trembles with well-concealed anger and a distinct tinge of worry. “The fleet is being led by Commander Radnak.”

Keith stills, muscles freezing to stringy bits of ice coating his bones.

There’s no way this is a coincidence. There’s _no way._ It was too easy to get Lance back from Radnak’s ship, and what, barely a month later and it’s _Radnak’s_ fleet that finds them? Radnak’s, of all the Galra actively and constantly searching for them. Radnak’s, of all the fleets they’ve already managed to dodge and manoeuvre around.

Keith’s lips curl. Something black writhes in his stomach and chest when he remembers the disgusting look of utter _glee_ on Radnak’s face as he brought the electric whip down on Lance’s back in crackling lashes again and again and _again._

He only has a split second to worry about how easily he can imagine how badly he wants to hurt Radnak as much as he did Lance, and to worry about how little he cares for how wrong that thought should be, before he’s running out of his room and sprinting to the bridge to find out if they’re going to wormhole out of the impending fight, or if he’s going to get a chance to wreak as much havoc as his heart desires with Red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter! Sorry for the sudden looonggg breaks between chapters, but, y'know, real life likes being a real b*tch.
> 
> The part about closure in Keith’s POV…yeah, I’m a lazy bitch. I ripped that right off from my original work where the character (named Rikuto) is considering giving someone else closure when he doesn’t even really know what it is himself.  
> *careless shrug*
> 
> p.s., to any misguided soul, this fic is not going to focus entirely on the Galra being the bad guys. I mean, obviously they’re going to be here, and not a small part either, but just saying, this is going to be one of those fics where the writer makes an entirely new species the maybe-bad-guys-depending-on-who-you-ask. Also, warning; I like to think I’m very good at making the supposedly bad/evil guys look like terrible motherfckers and then hitting you with them being more of morally grey characters and you don’t know whether to hate them or what. :) So, watch out for that. Nothing in my stories is ever clear cut black-and-white.
> 
> [Tumblr](https://www.azurehyn.tumblr.com) || [Wattpad](https://www.wattpad.com/user/azurehyn)


	15. this ship (is going down)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's coming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, would you look at that, I live.
> 
> I'd like to take a quick moment to apologize for how dead-silent this fic has been for actual months. Life quite literally head-slammed into me and I barely found a moment to write for an irritatingly long amount of time, and then the whole chaos of VLD that was season 8 (I...am not one of those even mildly okay with s8, and this isn't coming from a Klance fan, this is coming from someone who'd like a story to remain true to itself all the way to the end without pandering to someone else's whims and/or completely just flipping around so violently into something else entirely that it gives me whiplash. Some might say that s8 was true to itself. That's your opinion, you're entitled to it, but it's not my opinion so please don't attack me for not liking s8 and using me being a Klance fan as an excuse to be cruel, as has happened on Tumblr). 
> 
> When I did find time to write, I found myself gravitating towards my original novel (which is my passion project and freaken massive) due to there being a large amount of traffic on it over on Wattpad, plus it had been entered into a huge competition (Wattys 2018, longlist runner) so I was head over heels over there, and after my disappointment with the ending of VLD and swallowing fic after fic of fix-it fics (that I'd never really liked before because I had liked how the seasons themselves were, right up until s8, wherein I found myself suddenly understanding why the need for fix-it fics), I just ended up writing here and there on my original work.
> 
> I'd like to say that I'm back to a regular schedule with this fic, but that'd be a lie, and I'm not a liar. Things IRL are still very much up in the air for me (uni applications, moving to an entirely different city for better opportunity, family stress, financial difficulties, etc...guys, I'm turning 20 and I'm fucken tired), and I don't work well at all without some stable ground beneath me, so I really don't know when the next update will be. I do promise that update will come, slow as I might be going I absolutely haven't given up on this fic, I just can't make any promises as to WHEN I'll be able to put it up.
> 
> I very much did want to get this up on 13th January, though, because A) it's my birthday [technically my birth certificate says 14th Jan, but I was actually born at 11.58 PM, so it's kind of...in the middle, if my mom had been in labour for like 2 more minutes] B) it's also Hunk's birthday, and finally C) I posted the first part to this series, "nobody has to know (nobody but me)" on 13th January 2018. I kind of thought it'd be cool if I updated a chapter on the same date. Even though I don't think anyone's really stuck around to read this utter garbage after radio silence for so long.
> 
> Anywho, if you are reading this, enjoy! :)
> 
> (I literally planned my entire evening to make sure this posts at exactly 11.58 PM my time. That's dedication fellas)
> 
> (I still failed)

Galra have no fucking chill and Lance is sick to death of them. 

Why?

Because they decide to do a thing. ‘A thing’ being what Allura had been focusing a lot of her attention on figuring out before the whole mess that started on Ladene. ‘A thing’ being the Galra wormholing disturbingly close to whatever random location the Castle is floating through.

What he said about the Galra being suspiciously quiet for the last month? Yes, well, he’d like to backtrack and call bullshit. Never listen to another word out of Alejandro ‘Lance’ Sanchez McClain’s mouth, because, no matter what, __no matter fucking what,__ he will be proven wrong.

Case in point.

(He’d like to think he’s right about things at least some of the time, but now is not one of those times.)

And to top the damn cake with a poisonous purple cherry? It’s __Radnak’s__ fleet that’s on their asses.

Lance doesn’t let himself dwell on the black pit swirling in his stomach at the thought of facing Radnak down again as he bolts out of his room, armour on and strapping his bayard to the compartment for it on his thigh. He’s just turning a corner when Allie blinks to his side in a shower of golden dust. He only glances back at her to see her looking him up and down, taking in the sight of him in armour, ready for battle, for the first time since she got here, before he turns back and focuses on getting to the bridge and not on the wave of disapproval he feels at his back as Allie keeps pace with him.

She’s not about to let it go, though.

“Lance –”

“It’s been a month, Allie,” he cuts her off before she can say anymore, because he already knows what she wants to say. “Please, just please don’t tell me to stay back. You know I won’t.”

“I know,” she answers, surprisingly calmly. She catches him by the elbow to halt their run, and he gives her a sharp, if confused, look. She smiles at him, and he hates how concerned she looks, how sad and resigned she looks.

“You know?” he asks hesitantly.

“That’s not what I was going to say. I…just…be careful out there, hermanito.”

He searches her eyes, and he hates how concerned she looks, how sad and resigned she looks. He hates that worry that has her electric blue eyes dulling to lukewarm river water as she waits for his answer.

Slowly, he nods. “I’ll be careful. I –I promise.”

He wonders if it’s a promise he can keep.

Allie watches him for a moment before she nods. She holds her hand out to his shoulder, but doesn’t touch him. She cocks her head, asking. After a moment’s consideration, he nods. Her hand curves over the padded shoulder armour, and Lance considers himself lucky that this isn’t the first time he’s teleported with Allie when a wave of vertigo threatens to buckle his knees as solid gold washes over his eyes.

When he blinks, he finds himself standing on the bridge, back to the large bay windows, facing the entrance doors just as they slide open and Keith skids in. He pauses when he sees Lance, lips parting in a silent ‘o’ of surprise at the faint little particles of gold that cling to Lance from the teleportation before they disappear.

Lance frowns at him, because there’s this…there’s this strange look in Keith’s eyes. It’s fading away, fast, being replaced with the surprise that keeps on coming whenever Lance does anything magical-related (it doesn’t seem to get old with Keith), but Lance is sure that what he just saw was rage.

But at who? Lance for bailing on team training because of stupid fucking issues he’s struggling to deal with, or the Galra, because Keith is just perpetually angry at them and the things they do?

Before he can figure out which one it is, Hunk and Pidge come bursting in through the doors behind Keith. He startles at their abrupt appearance, then turns to see that Allie’s standing next to the Blue Paladin chair while the others gather around Allura’s place by her pedestals.

Lance gives her a look, but Allie just gestures for him to join the others. He hesitates for a split second, considering just making her come with him because she’s not an outsider, dammit, but he changes his mind. He’ll talk to Allie about her trying to force distance between her and the rest of the team later. Right now they’ve all got bigger things to worry about.

(Bigger things that happen to be over seven feet tall and entirely purple.)

(Oh, and claws. Don’t forget the claws.)

“Paladins,” Allura’s eyes sweep over them, and she pauses when she sees Lance, then gives him a firm nod that he returns. She spins around on the heel of her foot and passes her hand over one of her pedestals. “Coran has identified that the Galra fleet is headed by Commander Radnak. It’s likely that he’s been tracking us since our last mission.”

“How did they find us?” Pidge demands, looking more than a little infuriated. Like usual, to be honest.

Allura shakes her head. “I don’t know. It’s possible they’ve been on our tails for a while, trying to track us down.”

“How long until they reach us?” Shiro asks.

“About five dobashes,” Allura answers.

“Are we gonna wormhole out of here?” Hunk asks anxiously. His nervous glance at Lance is not lost to any of them.

Lance wonders if the sudden spiteful hope that they don’t wormhole away, that they stay and fight, just to prove all of them wrong and to prove that he’s __fine,__ he can handle this…he wonders if that thought is his alone, or some unsettling hybrid of his and the voices’ thoughts melding into one.

“We would,” Coran answers from his place at the consoles, tracking the progress of the fast incoming Galra fleet that is…disturbingly large. “But there’s two problems to that equation. One, the Galra cruiser’s already gotten too close for us to safely wormhole away without unwittingly being tailed by their fighters. Two, the teleduv needs at least another thirty doboshes of down time before we can operate it again. Another varga is the ideal, but even fifteen doboshes is pushing the limit. If we try now, we risk overheating the scaultrite crystals and blowing the entire Castle up!”

Allie looks suitably alarmed by that. Everyone else just looks frustrated by that, but when Lance glances at Keith…he looks sort of happy? Well, about as happy as one can be about having to fight off an entire freaking fleet of spaceships intent on your destruction. But then again, with Keith that’s pretty damned happy, because the boy has too much untamed energy and anger in him that needs an outlet –and the best one around is pummelling various enemy fighters with waves of lava frothing from his Lion’s mouth.

And that’s on a good day.

Based on the murderous look in his eyes a split second before he’d squashed it down when Lance looked at him, today is a bad day.

“So…to our Lions?” Pidge asks, a shade uncertain.

Allura turns a little, facing Lance head-on. Even though the expression on her face is stern yet kind, Lance finds himself straightening his spine, standing to attention.

“Lance,” she starts, steady, strong, but gentle all at the same time. he has no idea how she does it. “Do you think you’re ready to pilot the Blue Lion in a fight? The fleet is a sizeable one, and it is Commander Radnak leading it. I fear that forming Voltron may be needed, at least until we can wormhole away.”

Lance’s eyes flicker as he glances around at the circle the Paladins make around Allura, at where Coran is hunched over his console, trying to figure out a way to speed up the teleduv’s recovery period. He glances at the bay windows, iridescent stars replaced with a zoomed-up image of a large – _ _what the fuck why is it so big –__ Galran battlecruiser floating at the helm of two more, smaller, but still pretty damned big. No doubt filled with hundreds fighters inside them.

 

__A shiver wracks through his body when the single point of one of the Druid’s claws presses into a knob of his spine, this time digging in hard enough to draw blood. Lance bites his lip again to keep from crying out at the stinging pain._ _

__The Druid removes its claw, but Lance has no relief. It still feels like there’s something pressed to his spine, like an ice pick that’s been driven deep into his skin._ _

__

__“Seriously? This is the what-number test you’re doing now? I came out of the pod two weeks ago. It’s been two. Weeks. I’m pretty sure I’d notice if something was wrong by now. Um, yeah, my back’s fine. I can do a backbend if you –oh, you can do one too…Coran, people are not supposed to bend like that.”_ _

__

Lance blinks, startling at the unwanted memory that zips through his head just fast enough to have his eyes widening at the implication of it.

“Coran?” he calls out. His voice is oddly pitched, a little too high for normal, but he doesn’t care. Oh gods, oh gods, please, __please__ let what he’s thinking not be the actual reality he’s afraid they’re facing.

“Yes?” Coran says, a little distracted, still tapping harshly at his console.

“Why were you doing so many tests on my back?”

Coran freezes. After an agonizingly long moment, he turns around slowly, gaping at Lance. His face is ashen, moustache drooping in shock.

That’s all the answer Lance needs.

“Oh quiznack,” Coran breathes, eyes widened in horror.

(Remember what Lance said about liking being right at least sometimes? Well, again, this is not one of those times.)

“What?” Keith demands, looking from Lance to Coran. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Coran, what’s wrong?” Shiro asks, taking a step towards the old Altean, who suddenly looks very much like an old man. What realization he’s come to looks like it’s aged him three centuries.

“Lance?” Allie asks, pushing herself off from the wall and coming to stand at his shoulder, peering at him. “What’s wrong?”

“Coran, what is the matter?” Allura asks –no, actually, she’s politely demanding. The steel in her eyes shows she will not stand for a non-answer.

Lance speaks first. “There was a Druid, on the ship…before.” He doesn’t need to elaborate on when ‘before’ is. “He didn’t –I don’t remember, exactly, what –what happened, but the Druid put something in my back.”

Hunk and Pidge both exclaim in indignation at that, but Keith, to his right, is watching him with eyes that see more than they’re supposed to.

“You don’t remember?” he asks quietly. The unspoken question flashes clearly in his eyes. __Is it the voices?__

Lance nods to the spoken question, but before he can say more to Keith, Allura says, “The Druid put something in you? But the scans we performed would have picked up on it.” She blinks, turning to Coran. “Did they?”

“They didn’t,” Coran says, the air of devastation hanging over him like a thick, suffocating cloud. “But they did pick up an anomaly in the flow of quintessence in Lance’s body. At first I believed it to be Lance’s own magic, but Allie’s placing the binding runes on him cancelled that theory out. Then I thought it was the runes themselves. I didn’t…whatever it is, it doesn’t have any kind of tracking properties.”

“That’s why it was easy,” Keith says, violet eyes going wide in realization. Everyone turns to him, and he says, “It was too easy to get Lance back, considering he’s a Paladin. They __wanted__ us to get you back.”

 **_**_:ooh look at that now you_ ** _ ** **_**_’re a trojan horse:_ ** _ **

“Is it possible it’s quintessence based?” Allie asks, a fierce frown lowering her brows. “Pidge, you said those Druids use corrupt quintessence, right?”

Pidge nods. “Yeah, it’s the basis of how they use it.”

“But if it doesn’t have tracker properties, how did Radnak’s fleet find us?” Hunk asks.

Lance’s lips twist, a nauseating mix of anger and irritation and absolute __dread__ roils in his stomach. “The voices.” At this, everyone stops talking and snaps their attentions to him. “The Druid wanted to know more about how I stopped the explosion on Ladene.”

“Oh,” Pidge breathes, eyes widen. “And it showed us your –your memories, on that screen, when they came out.”

“But how could they have found us __now?”__ Keith asks.

He wishes he could hide the slight shake of his hands in his jacket pockets, but he can’t. As it is, he grips his hands in tight fists, and if his hands weren’t covered in gloves he’s sure he’d have broken skin with his nails from how tight he clenches his hands. He closes his eyes, ignoring the whisper of the voices that rustle across his mind like fabric crossing smooth marble floors.

“In the training room,” he murmurs, just loud enough that he can be heard, but still quiet enough that he can fool himself into thinking that he could pretend he never said them. “When…when Allie and I were sparring –”

“Lance –” Allie starts.

“They came out,” he speaks over her, because even if his sister thinks this isn’t something the team should be subject to, he knows, he __knows__ he can’t pretend forever. He knows they deserve to know what’s going on, if only to be prepared for the detonation that is Lance, the walking bomb. He quickly looks up, panicked that they’ll take his words wrong, and hurries to add, “They only came out for a bit, like just a few seconds, but…”

Allura glances at the screen showcasing the Galra fleet they’re going to have to fight when one of the team maybe might not be perhaps entirely at full strength –emotionally, at least –despite a month of recovery.

“A quintessence tracker,” she says. She looks at Lance. “Whatever the Druid put in you, it must have been laced with corrupt quintessence designed to lay dormant until something activated it. The voices might have been enough to do that.”

Lance’s shoulders slump. It’s his fault this is happening. It’s his fault Radnak’s fleet found them. It’s his fault.

**_**_:it’s always your fault it’s always going to be your fault:_ ** _ **

“Lance,” Shiro says, firmly, but not unkind. “This isn’t your fault, okay? None of this is your fault, so don’t think that for even one second.”

“But if I –”

“There’s no ‘buts’ about it, Lance,” Allura cuts in, her eyes holding his in a fierce gaze that robs him of any retaliation he had, any attempt he thought to make to shift the blame onto his own shoulders. “What the Galra did is barbaric, and you are __not__ to blame for any of it, no matter the circumstances.”

“Princess, Paladins,” Coran cuts in. His moustache is trembling in vexation as he jabs at his console. Sometimes Lance honestly wonders what exactly he’s doing when he so aggressively taps it. “We must make a decision now. The Galra are almost right on top of us!”

“I’m ready,” Lance hurriedly says. His face is set in grim determination, eyes steadfastly on Shiro and Allura as he says, “I can fight. I can do this.”

For a moment, Allura and Shiro glance at each other, worried frowns on their faces. Lance wonders in that moment if they’ll still keep him back. A part of him knows it wouldn’t be unwarranted; after all, they need people they can trust and he’s been anything but, what with all the secrets he’s kept.

Then Allura gives a minuscule nod, and Shiro turns to him. Even though the worry hasn’t cleared off his face one bit, even though he looks like he’d want to be doing almost anything else __but__ this, Shiro nods, a small, reassuring smile on his face. That smile, the confidence in it even despite the concern and the fact that there’s a freaking Galra fleet not five minutes away, does more for Lance than any words could.

“All right, we do this.” He looks to each and every one of them, holding their gazes for a moment before moving on. “We stick to the formations we’ve been training with, and as soon as the Castle’s ready to wormhole we leave.” And because he’s Shiro and a damn good commander, he turns to Allie and says, “I know you’ve been learning from Coran and Hunk how the Castle operates. Think you can man the drones for support until we can get out of here?”

For a split second, Allie looks startled that Shiro not only took notice of her, but is actually including her. Lance wonders if she thought he’d just dismiss her because she’s not been in space, in this fight, for very long. No way in hell –they’re only eight people on this entire Castle. They need all the help they can get, even with Voltron. They make up the legendary defender, not the invincible defender. Allie glances at him, and he worries she’ll try to say she wants to go in his Lion with him (he loves her, but she takes overprotective to levels unseen by any being alive), but then she looks at Shiro with a steely glint in her eye.

She smiles. It’s terrifying. “No problem. I’ve always wanted to shoot at enemy spaceships anyways.”

Lance grins.

※

The battle goes about as well as expected.

Which is to say, not well at all.

It all goes wrong the moment they’re in their Lions and out in space, struggling to fight where this…this shouldn’t be so hard. They’ve fought hundreds, maybe even thousands of times before, both planetside and in space. They’ve faced greater odds, not once, not twice, but enough times that he’s kind of lost count of. They’ve faced those odds, and beat them bloody.

It takes Lance a disturbingly long amount of time to realize what’s happening, and it happens two seconds before Shiro calls out, “Form Voltron!”

Nothing happens.

In the space between one second and the next, where they would have felt their Lions start to meld, joining together, their minds echoing their Lions and overlapping one another to better move as one being than five separate pieces, all they feel is a gut-wrenching emptiness in the pit of their stomachs where their bonds to each other and their Lions should be. Lance’s throat tightens, and it feels like there’s black smoke clogging up his chest as he reaches in, deep, searching…

And finds nothing. All he feels is the lingering confusion and bewilderment from his fellow Paladins, courtesy of simply being in their Lions and subconsciously, on a low level, bonding to better fight. But there’s nothing deeper than that like there should be, like there always is.

“What the fuck?” Pidge says.

Everyone’s startled reaction at __not__ forming Voltron means Shiro doesn’t call her out for that. The viewscreens of each of the Paladins pop up over the dashboard, showcasing the stunned looks on their faces.

“I’m not the only one wondering what’s happening, right?” Hunk asks nervously.

Before anyone can immediately answer, they’re forced to scatter out of a formation they could all fly in blindfolded and with their hands tied behind their backs as hundreds of fighters come streaming out of the battlecruiser floating a few yards ahead and shoot straight for them, purple lasers arcing through space as they begin firing. The drone Allie’s using to fight back gets struck by a laser and explodes. Half a minute later, a second drone comes shooting out of the Castle, blue lasers already firing away. It’d almost be amusing, how furiously the little drone is spinning and shooting, if not for the situation.

Lance grunts as he pushes and yanks at the joysticks, managing an impressive swerve over the second largest battlecruiser, the move sending about a dozen fighters on his tail, flying in a group like a cloud of goddamned gnats, careening into the hull of the battlecruiser. He’s still reeling in the aftermath of his shocking realization and the whole __not-being-able-to-form-Voltron__ that he misses the chance to try icing the cannons on the cruiser’s top deck that he somersaults over before he’s pulling up hard as he can, just barely scraping past a head-on collision with yet another freaking group of fighters.

“Why aren’t we forming Voltron?” Keith growls, yanking Red around and incinerating a fighter that was aiming at…

Even though he knows this isn’t the time, Lance can’t help thinking, __Really though? At Red’s butt? Have some class, you inconsiderate purple idiot.__ You don’t touch a cat’s rear unless you __want__ to die. Seriously. What the fuck. Basic feline manners, c’mon.

“Paladins?” Allura’s voice rings clear in his ear. “What’s wrong?”

“We can’t form Voltron!” Pidge yells. The panicked tone in her voice has Lance spinning around, flying over and cutting through a fighter that’s sticking dangerously close to Green’s side. The fighter explodes almost instantly, and Pidge breaths a short-lived sigh of relief. “Thanks.”

“What do you mean you can’t form Voltron?” Allura demands sharply.

“You guys felt that too, didn’t you?” Shiro asks. “There’s something blocking us, Princess. It’s like…”

“Like on Ladene,” Lance speaks into the silence when Shiro trails off, frowning in frustration as he tries to figure out what is going on. The others gape at him from the viewscreens; Keith, angry as hell, Hunk looking nauseas, Pidge irritated enough to possibly stab someone, and Shiro confused for a moment before his brows shoot up. “Remember? We couldn’t feel our Lions. This is the same thing.”

“You’re right,” Hunk says, eyes wide. “This is exactly like that!”

“But __how?”__  Pidge growls. He knows it’s not at him, but still, Lance winces at her sharp tone. She doesn’t notice as she ploughs on, “How the hell could the Galra have developed technology capable of messing with our connection to Voltron? They haven’t had any access to the alchemic tech that built the Lions in ten thousand years. This shouldn’t be statistically possible!”

“Quiznack,” Allura breathes, so quietly that if her voice hadn’t been coming through the comm in his helmet, he wouldn’t have heard her. “Coran, how long until the wormhole is ready?”

“Ten doboshes, Princess!”

“We’re not gonna last five out here!” Hunk shrieks as he barrels through another cluster of fighters. Honestly, where the fuck are they coming from? They’re so goddamned __many.__

**_**_:you know what you can do:_ ** _ **

Lance blinks, for a horrific moment pulling to a complete dead stop in the middle of space, so suddenly that even the fighter that had been chasing at him goes hurtling past. Something pushes at the corner of his mind, pushes hard enough that he gasps sharply, and in the moment when he shuts his eyes tight on the flare of pain the push ignites in his mind, a memory filters in.

__A curving wall of golden light._ _

He sits back up ramrod straight, staring straight ahead. Blue nudges at him, confused, and Lance hurriedly apologizes as he says, “Allie? Allie!”

“I’m here!” Allie yells as she manages a clumsy curve around a fighter.

“The church –” he hears the others’ confused sounds, but he ignores them all. If this works, they just might get out of this unscathed. Relatively. “Allie, do you remember the church thing, when you came to visit me at the Order?”

“Of course I remember,” she sounds vaguely irritated at the reminder. She grunts as the Castle’s particle barrier is hit with a particularly powerful blast from the obnoxiously large cannons on the foremost battlecruiser’s deck. “Fergus almost killed you for being an idiot.”

 _ _Oi,__ “That’s not fair!” he exclaims. “Those demons were with a Knight of Hell.”

“Knight of __what?”__  Hunk yelps.

“Exactly.” She deadpans. “It took thirty Witches to fight our way through and __not die.__ Why are we talking about this?”

“D’you remember how we helped?” Lance asks, choosing to ignore her jab. What, he was younger then. No one told him wandering around an abandoned and decidedly demonic looking church was a bad idea. “Fergus wouldn’t let us fight –” Allie scoffs at that, because Fergus’ exact words were ‘yer a pair of bloody greenhorns wet behind the ears, get the fogging hell back!’. Lance cracks a smile as he continues, “So how else did we help?”

Allie is quiet for a few seconds, and so is everyone else. The Paladins continue to just barely fight off the swarms of fighters while trying to defend the Castle taking an ample beating from the three battlecruisers attacking it. Keith and Shiro tag-team as they work the battlecruisers while Hunk and Pidge back them, and Lance goes after as many fighters as he can, shooting them down before they can do too much damage to Hunk and Pidge, Allie helping as much as she can with her small drone. Everyone’s viewscreens had winked off so they could focus on the harrowing battle, and they all remain silent, confused as to why Lance is bringing this up all of a sudden, but too occupied to ask why.

When she speaks, it’s slow, measured. Calculating. “This is a ship that’s as big as Gavin’s castle, Lance. Actually, it’s __bigger.”__

“We protected thirty Witches and a Warlock against one of the oldest demons in creation, and we __won.”__ He presses. “If we do this together again we can hold the Galra back long enough for the wormhole to get back in shape and get us out of here. Coran?”

“Yes?”

“How long until the wormhole’s ready?”

A pause. “At an absolute minimum?”

“Yeah,” Allie says. “We won’t be able to hold it for long.”

“Five doboshes.” He answers decisively. “Any less and –”

“Kaboom?”

“Well, more like __KABOOM,”__  he yells, loud enough for Lance to jump in his seat. “But yes, that.”

“Yeah, not interested.” Allie mutters. “Living is a thing I want to continue doing.”

“What exactly is it you’re planning?” Allura asks, sounding every bit the consternated Princess out of the loop that she currently is.

“Allie and I are going to shield the Castle until we can get out of here,” he answers. “It’ll be like a magical particle barrier.”

“You can do that?” Pidge asks, shocked.

“We’ll try,” Lance and Allie say at the exact same time. Lance adds, “But again, we won’t be able to hold it for long. The bigger the surface area we’re covering, the more it takes out of us.”

“Everyone needs to be __inside__ the Castle for this, though,” Allie says, speaking from experience of making a shield like this and having seen how the wormhole works several times by now. “You guys need to get back in here, because once the wormhole is ready we’re going to have to drop the barrier immediately and leave.”

“Princess, do you think the Castle can hold defence long enough for us to get in and for Lance and Allie to start the barrier?” Shiro asks.

“Yes,” Allura replies. “Coran, begin redirecting all power being used in non-priority sections of the Castle to the particle barrier along all sections, and when the Paladins are close enough, open up suitable sections for them to pass through.”

“Understood, Princess,” Coran replies.

“Okay guys, everyone gather to starboard of the Castle on my mark,” Shiro calls out.

The Paladins ring out a chorus of affirmations, steadily flying closer to one another to make it easier as they continue fending of fighter jets still coming at them. Lance backs Keith as he slashes through half a dozen fighters at once, moving too fast for them to even register Red’s already been through them. He frowns as something pushes at his mind, something familiar, warm, __hot,__ something he’s felt before –but it’s gone before he can reach out to it and hold on.

“Three…”

Lance grips his controls tight as they switch places, Keith tearing apart the fighters that Lance ices within seconds, Hunk leaping up behind them to stop a fighter from ramming itself into Keith in a kamikaze move.

“Two…”

Shiro whacks a stray fighter with Black’s tail in a move that Lance finds absurdly, inappropriately hilarious, sending the ship spinning end-over-end right into the beam Pidge shoots at it. Powerful vines enclose over the fighter and __squeeze__ until it bursts in a cloud of metal.

__“Go!”_ _

Everyone moves instantly, spinning around and hightailing the fuck out of there. Shiro leads the charge, using his laser beam to clear a path for the others to streak through, heading straight for a gaping section of the particle barrier that’s just big enough for the Lions to shoot through. Lance glances back just in time to see the particle barrier close over a fighter that thought to follow, slicing it in a clean half. Lance turns back and books it as fast as he can to Blue’s hangar while the others head to theirs, knowing that this next part is up to him and Allie.

He just hopes he doesn’t screw this up.

Blue sends him a rumble of encouragement as he sprints out of his hangar, wishing more than anything that he could cut the trip shorter by blinking halfway there, at the very least. As it is, his long legs give him the advantage of being the first to make it there, Keith and Pidge only a few steps behind him. Allura’s at her controls, frizzy tendrils of hair escaping her bun as she grits her teeth and manoeuvres the large Castle as best she can while Coran takes over sending drones out to take down the fighters that come to close. In the distance, the purple glow of the ion cannon charging up lights a fearful fire in Lance as he runs to Allie’s side where she stands in front of the bay windows, stripping off the pieces of his armour as he jogs to her.

“Allie!” he shouts as he leaps over the three steps of the staircase up to reach her. He’s already got his shoulder pads, chest plate and gauntlets off, everything left in a trail behind him, and is hurriedly unzipping the back of his flight suit and shoving it down to bunch at his waist as he yells, “The rune, get it off!”

Allie nods and hurries over to him, her hands glowing as she presses them to the iridescent rune still etched on his side. She mutters something, and all Lance feels is a tugging sensation in his chest, like there’s a leash tied around his heart and pulling.

Then, all of a sudden, it vanishes. Lance breathes in a sharp gasp of relief when he feels his magic run through his veins like cool water, the centre of it in his chest swirling giddily to be free, to finally be __free__  again.

His sister steps back once she’s done, and Lance looks down. The rune is gone.

He wastes no time, shoving his arms through the flight suit and pulling it up again before nodding at her. “You ready?”

“Ten minutes ago, slowpoke.” She teases, though her voice trembles ever so slightly. She’s nervous.

He is too, and rightly so. He would never attempt to do this if he was on his own –he’s not actually suicidal, thanks. Using as much magic as this will take, to cover up the whole space that the Castle’s particle barrier is trying to protect, can easily kill a single Witch attempting it. But he’s not alone; he has Allie. They’re strong.

(He just hopes he doesn’t screw this up and that they’re strong __enough__.)

He still petulantly sticks his tongue out at her on principle, because he’s still a little shit, before glancing back at where the Paladins have seated themselves at their stations to pilot their drones and do what –minimal –damage they can. Coran and Allura are still in their places as they work to solely defend the Castle from the attack.

“Princess,” he calls out, heart shivering in nervous anticipation. “As soon as we drop the shield, you __have__ to open a wormhole and get us through. I’m not sure, but our shield might mess with the Castle’s particle shield, and we could be left wide open after that.”

“We won’t be able to do anything after that,” Allie adds, brutally honest. “This is going to take everything we have.”

 _ _Short of killing us,__  Lance adds. He doesn’t say it aloud; he doubts anyone would appreciate it. The break-neck tension crackling in the room is already heavy enough to smother them as it is.

“It’s not dangerous, is it?” Shiro asks, worried.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it is,” Pidge says with a concerned frown.

“Everything about magic is dangerous,” Allie replies bluntly. “It’s just a matter of being careful what we do with it. Magic comes at a cost to those who use it.”

“Honestly, the underhanded shots at me are getting old.” Lance mutters.

“Say that to me again when you’re not on a team that pilot sentient coloured Lions in space.” She deadpans. She reaches out to him, and in the flashing lights of the battle –losing in their favour, to be completely honest –he can see how scared she is, in her eyes, from the harshly drawn lines of her face, her body held tense and poised for a fight. “Don’t kill yourself, hermanito.”

He grins sharply, playing up his nearly non-existent confidence as much as he can to assuage her, and grips her outstretched hand. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Their fingers interlock, grip tight.

The beginnings of the magic they weave together is unassuming, at first. Barely noticeable, in fact, if you’re not the one performing it; there’s only a flicker of golden light sparking over Allie’s hands clenched around Lance’s to show for it. Lance strokes and coaxes his magic like it’s a lazy cat. It stirs in his chest, lethargic from so long going untouched in even the slightest way, heeding his call. Much as he railed against it at first, Allie sealing off his magic did what she’d intended and it’s back to full power. In his mind, he imagines what form he wants it to take, imagines his magic seeping out of his skin and coalescing into something bigger, solid enough to touch, unbreakable.

It happens almost before Lance is ready for it. The only warning he gets is when something slams into his chest, hard, like a boulder crashing into him and knocking the breath out of him. He hears Allie’s sharp gasp and knows she felt it, too.

His smile is shaky, but it’s there. This is working.

Thunder with no sound reverberates through the floor they stand on, the vibrations rocking through the Castle in a single wave. Another thumps through the floor, and another, like the pulse of some massive animal beating under their feet. Lance screws his eyes shut tighter, groves forming between his deeply furrowed brows as he focuses on what he needs from his magic, pulling every bit of it he can into a tight ball just waiting to spring open, his free hand curling, fingers twitching in little spasms of anticipation.

This time is different to the cave in Ladene. This time is just as urgent, if not more so, for there is nowhere he can try to send everyone else to, to keep them safe, to keep them out of the clutches of those who would hurt them. Now, he has time to envision what he wants from his magic. Now, he has time to perfect the vision of it that floats in his mind, firmly fixed yet intangible, a painting waiting to mimic reality.

Then he feels it. Just the barest touch –they’re taught from childhood to never try to connect their two magics to form one for the danger of losing their identity entirely –but it’s enough for him to know that this is __working.__ Still, he and Allie maintain a careful distance from each other; with how close doing this makes them, it would be so easy to slip into each other, their minds melding, gaps reinforced with their combined magic, until they would no longer be their own persons.

He will not expose Allie to the nightmares and the cruel, dark taunting of the voices, even if they’re quiet right now, as if eager to see what’ll happen.

“Now?” Allie’s voice is a harshly whispered question as he __feels__ her struggle to maintain a hold on her magic, bucking at the reigns like a wildly enthusiastic puppy hell-bent on raining chaos everywhere around it.

His own is similar, difficult to control –performing magic of the magnitude they’ve built it up to is incredibly taxing not because of how much magic is pulled from them, but how much energy it takes to control it, to keep from unleashing it before they’re ready in ways they didn’t want.

Lance doesn’t miss a beat.

__“Now!”_ _

Like a perfectly synchronized springboard, they let their magic loose, forcing errant golden tendrils into the path they’d laid out, a path that has a shimmering wall of yellow laced with thin strings of blue (where the hell did those come from? Is –holy shit, it’s Lance, they’re from __Lance,__ the blue is his magic even though he hasn’t been able to see his magic for years, and never in __blue)__  pulsing out of their bodies, moving outward, expanding, stretching, growing, easily slipping out of the walls.

The golden force-field explodes out of them with enough force to nearly send them buckling to their knees. They have to grit his teeth hard enough for an ache to build up in their jaw, but the dull pain grounds them, reminds them not to forget to keep a hold of their side of the power. They feel the magic crawling over the entirety of the Castle as if their own hands are cradling the spaceship, and then the magic moves past that, until it’s a thin –but incredibly strong –layer hovering inches from the buzzing quintessence-fuelled currents of the particle barrier.

A Galra fighter crashes into the shield. They don’t see it, it happens somewhere at the back of the Castle, and distantly they register a concerning beep from one of the monitors around Allura, but they can __feel__ it happen. They can feel the fire of the fighter exploding as it crashes into the shield of magic. They can feel the way the metal it’s built of presses down, flattening against the wall of golden with blue fairy lights, compressing in on itself a split second before it’s engulfed in flames. They can feel it, but it’s not painful. It’s more like a bothersome, drunken insect flying straight into their arm, big enough for them to notice it smacking into them, but too small for it to really hurt.

A thin smile quirks their lips up. It’s working. It’s __working.__

The smile disappears the second they feel the pinpricks of what feels like thousands of needles poking into their body, and it takes them far too long to realize those are shots coming from the fighters swarming around the protected Castle like murderous gnats. The magical shield is borne from them, and they wear the fabric of the magic close to their own skin. One or two pricks feels fine, but when it’s so many all at once, hitting what feels like every part of their body –yeah, that stings. They know he/she can feel it too, when his/her hand spasms around theirs, tightening in discomfort when a particularly big prick spikes them just below their ribcage.

Goddamn, if the shots from the fighters feels like this, what’s the one from the ion canon going to be like? They hope Coran can get the wormhole booted up and ready to ship them out of this mess soon. They’d really rather not do a repeat of being hit by an ion canon, especially not when he/she is connected with him/her and will feel that horrific pain as well.

They open their eyes, brow furrowed so deep it’s practically imprinted on their skin now, sweat dripping down their face and forming at the small of their back, and everything is too bright. They don’t even know when they closed their eyes but they’re glad they did, because beautiful as the sight of their shield is, it is __fucking blindingly bright__ and they have to look away just to keep their eyes from being scorched.

They/he look away, and catches sight of the Paladins, and Coran and Allura. They’re clearly not having their senses tuned the fuck up to 1,000% because they’re all staring up at the magical barrier in mind-boggled awe, their faces washed out in flickering yellow tones, thin strands of blue darting over every few seconds. Keith looks over just at that moment, and their eyes meet –Keith’s, widened in absolute wonder, Lance’s, softening at the look that Keith is aiming right at him.

It almost feels like Keith knows what it means to look at him like that. It almost feels like he knows that Lance’s heart dances in glee to be the focus of his attention, __like that.__

Despite the circumstances, Lance can’t help but think, __God he’s beautiful.__

Then something happens, changes. He/they feels a thump deep in his gut, kind of like a giant decided today would be a good day to just step on his stomach. Lance winces, and his head snaps back to face forward again. The golden shield before them ripples. Another thump rolls through him, this one simply __more__ than before, resounding all through his body.

It turns into a chill that spreads out over his skin, a cold unlike anything he’s ever felt, so deep he can feel it in his shivering bones, but…it doesn't hurt. It doesn't hurt, and maybe he’s a little delirious or something, because a second later there’s ice crawling over the surface of the shield, and he can feel it moving on the shield as if it’s cold metal sliding over his skin as it takes the energy it needs to

“Lance –Lance, what are you doing?” Allie demands, the strain of performing magic of this magnitude making her voice come out between harshly panting breaths. “Stop it! Don’t push yourself!”

 _ _I’m__ “I’m not,” he answers in a quiet, awed breath. He stares up at the forcefield of shimmering gold, and he realizes the thin strands of blue –the ice is coming from them. It’s like a web, those blue streaks, a web of veins that feed the ice that keeps on crawling over the expanse of the gold, reinforcing it until he can barely feel the pricks of the fighters’ shots anymore. “This is so easy, Allie. It’s not taking anything out of me.”

Okay, well, that’s a bit of a lie. He can feel his energy leaking out of him, bit by bit, like water leaking out of a dripping tap, but it’s not enough to be concerning. He knows Allie doesn't quite believe him either; he can feel it, on the fringes of his mind, the wariness in her to believe that he’s doing this effortlessly.

Then he hears it.

Them.

(To be perfectly honest, he’s been aware of them the whole time. It’s like, listening to cicadas screaming in your ear, but the sound becomes so continuous and on the same note that it just fades into the background until it feels like he can’t even hear them anymore.)

(But he hears it when they speak. __Oh,__ he hears it.)

 **_**_:this is what we’re made for:_ ** _ ** __

There is no malice in the voices now. Just longing, such terrible, mournful longing that has tears springing to Lance’s eyes, his heart weighing heavy with a grief he doesn’t recognize, a grief he does recognize, interweaving into something unfamiliar but horribly heavy. What is this? They’ve never sounded like this. They’ve never felt so…so sad.

**_**_:this is what we’re made to do:_ ** _ **

Then why are they sad? Why do they sound like they’ve lost something when they say that?

Allie’s hand tightens in his, maybe because she can feel the voices, maybe just to make sure he’s still okay. He is, confused, but okay, and he squeezes her hand back to show it.

“Coran?” he/they call back, and even though they don’t mean it, their voice trembles ever so slightly. Maybe they’re… _ _under exaggerating__  how taxing this really is. But they’re more concerned about they/Allie than they/himself. She/they isn't at all used to this type of magic, having to exert so much effort to control it. “How much longer?”

“Two dobosh and thirty-eight ticks!”

Two minutes, basically. They can make it for two minutes.

Yeah, they can make it.

As the seconds tick by they feel the energy needed to maintain the shield slowly start to completely drain out of them, funnelling into the shield too quickly for them to replenish any of what’s being taken. Their legs start to tremble before their aware of it, and at first he/they thinks they/Allie’s being hit with the exhaustion first when they feels they/her hand shake in they/his until they realizes they’re both shaking, their entire bodies wracked with fine tremors as they struggle to keep a hold of the shield. Beads of sweat roll down the sides of their face, and really, it’s fucking __annoying,__ they want to wipe them off, it’s disgusting, oh gods they just want to take a hot shower and crash on their bed and sleep for an eternity.

The magic bucks at the reins they’ve leashed over it, wanting to go bigger, faster, burn __brighter,__ but they keep a hold of it. Their brow deepens into a fierce scowl as they fight to keep the magic in place, because they know if they let it loose, it’ll completely run them over and drag them into it, until they cease being AlLance McClain and merges totally into the magic and loses himself. On the outer fields of his/their attention, he/they feels Allie struggle with him/them, but somehow they manage to keep the shield in place.

Not for long.

Somewhere in the distance, or maybe right behind them but it feels like they’ve been dunked underwater and someone’s calling to them from the surface, they hear a frustrated shout. It sounds familiar, but for the life of him Lance doesn't have enough brain cells left to figure out who. The sound of that voice drags him out of the weird mindspace that is the shared mentality with Allie, bringing him out of merging with her when he didn’t even realize it happening.

 _ _sometimes, when he floats, he thinks,__ there’s someone i care about.

__this matters. he knows._ _

The shield falters.

The momentary distraction has a crack spiderwebbing down the shield right in front of him and for a sickening second Lance thinks it’s about to fall. Then something golden, warm, familiar, sweeps across it, reinforces the patches, and Lance sends out a small pulse of gratitude to Allie before forcing his scattered attention back to the task at hand.

But goddamn, how long does it take to open the wormhole? He can feel his grasp on the magic weakening, like a noose tied around his neck slowly loosening its hold. They better get the damn wormhole ready soon, because he doesn't know how long he can keep this up, and once he crashes, he knows Allie will quickly follow because she can’t keep the shield up on her own, not on this massive a scale. Then they’ll be left defenceless.

Then he hears it, the blessed words.

“Princess, __now!”__

No time is wasted. He feels the Castle hurtle forward, feels it like cold air whipping past him as it picks up speed and streaks straight past the Galra battlecruiser. He yelps when a sudden burning pain flares at his back, and Allie’s hand spasms in his momentarily.

Shit, they just barely dodged that shot from the charged ion canon. He can taste burning smoke, and from the uncomfortable warmth at the small of his back he knows that the hit their shield just suffered right at the rear has translated to their bodies.

He doesn't want to think about what it would have been like if the ion canon hadn’t missed, if they hadn’t moved out of the way in time.

“Allura!” he hears the same voice shouting again. “Get us out of here, now!”

__red, in so many forms that pulsate and roll over him, warming his cold, setting fire to his chill, showering him in bright sparks of light that dance with blue-white drops of snow, whirling around him in a secret dance._ _

remember me, _ _blue coaxes, shimmering in the red, twirling around it, the red clinging close, some part always touching blue, always near blue, afraid to let it go.__ don’t forget me, be here for me, for them.

 _ _sometimes, when he sees the red he likes, he thinks,__ there’s someone i care about.

“We need to get out of reach of any fighters before we go through!” Allura yells back. A beat of horrible, tense silence. “Everyone, brace yourselves!”

Lance’s eyes fly open and he staggers, barely able to keep his feet under him when the Castle swerves another shot from the ion canon. Only Allie’s grip on his hand and the knowledge, no, the __need__ to keep everyone here safe has him finding his balance again, but he doesn't close his eyes against the near blinding brightness of the shield, because just beyond it he can see it. Everything before his eyes is hazy around the edges, but he can still see the swirling vortex of blue and white and black, stars he doesn't recognize twinkling inside it.

Gods, he’s never seen a more beautiful sight.

His heart hammers in his chest like a runaway train, beating against the cage of his ribs as he watches the wormhole get closer, and closer. Just before they pass through it, an almost overwhelming wave of pure exhaustion nearly overcomes him, like molten lead pumping in his veins in place of blood. He stumbles, and this time he can’t stop himself falling to his knees, bruising them with how heavily he lands, Allie following not half a beat later.

And still they keep the shield up. Even with the magic eating into the very last dregs of magic they have, coming dangerously close to stealing into their reserves, they keep the shield up with every last ounce of strength left between them, panting as they try to drag in more air into their lungs than they feel is actually getting there, never letting go of each other’s hands. Cracks form across the entirety of the shield, mimicking their dwindling strength, but still they keep it up. They’re not in the clear, not yet.

An instant later the Castle darts through the wormhole. New stars wink into his blurred sight as they zoom through the wormhole in barely a blink, coming out in a different location, the panic of battle disappearing behind them as the Castle comes to a meandering, floating stop with the wormhole sucking into a tiny hole before completely vanishing.

The splintering golden shield evaporates into floating particles of yellow dust that quickly disappear as soon as the Castle passes through the wormhole. Lance doesn't even care anymore where they are, if they’re really safe. There is absolutely nothing left in him.

Lance tips forward and crashes to the ground, landing on his side as his eyes flutter shut and his mind floats in a bleary haze. Everything feels so light in his brain, but the heaviness of his body and aches in his bones weigh him down. He wants to pass out, but his mind has different ideas and keeps him conscious. He wants to move, but he can’t even twitch a finger.

He feels himself moving, not on his own volition. He’s being braced up against something, something malleable but still firm and strong along the line of his back curving to fit himself better against whatever –whoever? –it is.

His eyes are closed, the lids weighed down with two-tonne bricks, but he can hear something by his air, warm air hitting his cheek as a voice urgently says something to him. He frowns, clinging to the sound of that voice, tugging on the string that draws him to it as he pulls and pulls on it, trying to open his eyes, trying to figure out what’s wrong, why does he feel so __heavy__ and so tired, trying to remember what’s going on.

“Lance? Come on, say something, please,” a crack, barely there, but big enough for him to hear the worry in it. “Can you hear me? Lance?”

Lance? Is that his name? Whose?

Slowly, painstakingly, he pries open his eyes. He stares blankly at the face in front of him.

Who?

Wait…who..what’s going on? Gods, his brain feels like sludge sloshing about in his skull.

He starts with what he knows, what he can see and the knowledge that arises the longer he looks upon the face before him. Skin that is pale as snow, but there a few freckles he can see dotting the nose, freckles that are so small that he knows he can only see them now because of how close they are. Lips that are a pale pink, a little chapped, but nicely shaped.

The eyes flicking between his own are like violet starburts, storms thundering in the horizon, an odd shade of greyish-purple now, but something tells him that these eyes are never entirely sure what colour they want to be. There’s concern in them right now, anxious worry, and a lukewarm dart of realization goes through him when he realizes the worry in them is for __him,__ for how unresponsive he’s being.

It hits like a train smashing into a concrete wall. Everything that just happened washes over him like a powerful tsunami; the training room, sparring with Allie, the voices overtaking him for a split-second that was long enough for it to matter, the Galra, Radnak, __Radnak__ finding them, Allie’s determined face to help in whatever way she could, unable to form Voltron, rushing back to the Castle, Allie gripping his hand, the shield, a solid curving wall of gold with webbed veins of blue giving out ice that crawled over the gold to strengthen it, the magic eating into him, the wormhole, falling, Allie

His hand is empty.

“Keith?” he croaks, his voice sounding like a seventy-year-old smoker’s.

Relief has Keith’s eyes widen, and a smile that is so illegally, __impossibly__ tender has his lips tipping up. “Hey. Welcome back to the living.”

If Lance had his wits about him, he’d make a comeback. As it is, it’s taking everything he has to keep himself awake. His lips feel dry, like the ground that cracks from thirst under a desert sun as he says, “A –Allie.”

“She’s fine, I think” Keith says, and then Lance feels something shifting under him, and holy shit, oh holy gods he’s practically draped over __Keith,__ it’s __Keith__ who’s holding up his basically immobile body.

Gods, if you exist, please have mercy on his soul. It’s getting increasingly difficult to fight off the growing attraction –yes, thank you, Lance is self-aware enough to recognize this for what it is –in the middle of a war for someone he doubts could ever return those feelings without little moments __like this__ springing up on him and totally catching him off-guard.

No, seriously, please. A little mercy would be nice.

He doesn't have time to freak out over that not-so-little thing as Keith shuffles around enough for Lance’s gaze to sweep over the rest of the team standing around him –Pidge and Hunk hugging each other with matching faces of gut-twisting worry, Coran helping a frazzled Allura to stand beside the other two –before coming face to face with Allie, braced in much the same position as Lance on Shiro.

If Lance looks anything like she does then, well. He looks like utter shit. She’s incredibly pale, tan skin almost white-washed, lips utterly bloodless. The bags under her eyes look like black bruises tattooed onto her sallow skin, and her eyelids droop as she somehow musters up a smile for him.

“Looks like we still got it, huh?” she croaks.

His lips twitch in a mirroring smile. “Yeah. Let’s maybe not do that for a while.” Gods, he can barely speak. His tongue weighs heavy in his mouth, and his brain takes way too long to form the words.

“Agreed.” She sighs and nearly tips forward before Shiro shifts a little and guides her head to rest against his shoulder as her eyes flutter shut.

Lance isn't worried, though. He can still feel the lingering thread that connects him to her. Allie’s tired, so incredibly tired, and he can feel it as an echo of his own exhaustion –but otherwise, she’s fine. Allie’s out like a light in two seconds flat, looking so much more peaceful asleep than awake, and Lance knows he’s not far behind her.

But he can’t go quite yet.

“Lance?” Allura steps forward, and it is almost a physical effort to drag his drowsy attention to her as she kneels beside him and Keith. “Are you all right? Are you injured in any way?”

He hums, a thin sound. “We…we’ll be fine.” His slow blink is three seconds too long for normal. “Just a little tired. Sleep sounds real good…”

“Come on,” Shiro nods at Keith as he gathers Allie up in his arms. “Let’s get you two to the medbay.”

Lance frowns a little. “Pods…not gon’ work.”

“No,” Coran says, and Lance would be a little more concerned about the fact that Coran looks like a mere blob of floating orange leaning over him if not for the warm gentleness of a hand pressed to his clammy forehead. “But there are quite comfortable beds there, and I’d like to monitor both of you to ensure nothing goes wrong.”

“Oh.” Makes sense.

He doesn't know, he’s not sure, but he thinks he blacks out for a split second, because before he knows it he’s looking up at the single row of lights that line the ceiling of the Castle hallways, so, so high up, as they steadily move by him.

His head flops to the side a little and he sees Shiro, tall and broad-shouldered, and Allie’s legs sticking out over his arms with the mane of her curls falling across his arms. He shifts his head just a little, and he gulps when he’s met with the underside of a strong, sharp jaw, dark hair curling around the collars of a black flight suit covering up a neck that Lance has seen in his dreams a few times too many.

“Heh,” Lance hums, and because he’s half out of his mind with fatigue he uses it as an excuse to cuddle –yes, quote that on him or he’ll deny it –a little closer to the strength of those arms, tight to the warm, solid form that’s holding him. “You’re cradling me in your arms.”

Keith stutters at that, pausing in the hallway. He hisses quietly, “Wait, you remember that?”

“Uhm…” wait, was he not supposed to say that? Shit. Oh shit, he’s been pretending he didn’t know what Keith was talking about that time. “We…well…”

He doesn't get much more than that. Blackness dances around the edges as dark smoke, and he hears his Keith, his friend, his I-want-to-be-more friend, call out to him, but he really couldn’t answer even if he tried. All he’s aware of is his body sagging like a limp ragdoll, and strong arms tightening around him.

And then he’s gone.

※

The towering white halls of the Castle are still and silent.

The twittering of the mice tumbling through the vents in play is absent. The tinkering of a small girl in green with pieces of metal and crackling wires strewn about her is missing. The clanging and clicking of a worried boy in yellow with pots and pans scattered across the surface of the table he stands before is nonexistent.

The training room sits quiet and lonely without the harsh slashes of a blade on Altean steel and the grunts of exertion filling its space. The hangars where five mighty Lions stand crackles with a barely-there tinge of worry emanating from the mechanical beasts as they await news from their Paladins.

On the bridge stands a lone princess, carefully manoeuvring her massive Castle through the endless expanse of space as she bites her lip in worry, body here but mind elsewhere, on a blue-eyed boy she knows she is regretful for severely underestimating, and a girl with almost identical blue eyes whose thoughts the princess cannot discern.

In the medbay are four chairs pulled up between two comfortable –and occupied –beds, black and red sitting in the chairs. Puttering about the beds and chattering with the green and yellow is a royal advisor turned medic, looking over the two lying unconscious on the beds and ensuring that the machines they’re hooked up to spew out information that may or may not help, with the green and yellow offering tidbits of thought on how to improve them.

The princess on the bridge notices the sudden appearance of an energy signature on her Castle that is entirely unfamiliar and was not there before at the same moment as the blue boy jackknifes off the bed he lays on with a strangled, tortured gasp, eyes flying open, panic and fear filling them to the brim.

The red and black rush to him as he blindly struggles to tear out the wires and tubes connected to his skin, trying to __get away.__ The other three hurry over as the girl in the second bed shoots up, the same fear clouding her eyes a hazy blue as she looks at her brother in a panic.

“Lance –Lance –” she reaches for him, to comfort him, reassure him, but he’s blind to it.

He scrambles off the bed, arm bleeding from where he tore out the needle that was stuck under his skin, feeding him nutrients. His eyes are wild and panicked, and the black approaches him with the same cautious wariness he would a cornered animal. The red tries to move closer, but a firm hand on the shoulder from black stops him, keeps him in place.

“Lance –” the black, no, Shiro, says. “Calm down. Take it easy, okay? What’s wrong?”

Lance barely registers the words said to him. His pupils are massively dilated, huge black holes surrounded by a thin ring of cerulean blue as he fixes his terrified eyes on the medbay doors. He backs up, pushes himself to the wall, his entire body trembling from head to foot.

The red, no, Keith, hates this. He hates how scared Lance looks, and he hates that he doesn't know how to help, doesn't know what’s wrong to even try and help.

“Lance?” he starts, hesitantly. He doesn't want to scare Lance off by speaking to loud.

Lance looks at him straight in the eye at the sound of his name, and Keith knows that scared as he is now, Lance is still lucid. He’s aware. He knows where he is. He’s just __scared.__

“Lance, come on,” he says, trying to be coaxing, hoping he’s not missing the mark. “What’s wrong? Talk to us.”

Keith glances back when he hears a commotion behind him, to see Hunk and Pidge and Coran all struggling to keep Allie from tearing out her IV drip the way Lance did, to keep her from rushing to her panicked brother. She growls in frustration when she can’t, her hands shaking too much –from fatigue, from adrenaline-born fear, he doesn't know –and looks up. She meets Keith’s gaze. She leans forward on the bed, toward Keith, almost as if she wants to reach out to him.

“He’s –he’s here,” she manages through a croaking throat. Her eyes are almost perfect mirrors to Lance’s.

“What?” Shiro says, keeping his gaze on Lance in case he tries to bolt, but listening to Allie. “Who are you talking about?”

Keith doesn't think he’s ever seen Allie look so terrified, and when he glances back at Lance, it’s to see the same look on his face, if not worse.

“The –the Beast,” she whispers hoarsely. “He’s __here.”__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was that a dramatic spot to end the chapter? Yes. Do I regret it? Absolutely not.
> 
> My replies to any comments that may or may not come might be delayed by a few days, because at the moment I have to climb an actual 20-foot tall tree to access the neighbouring hotel's WiFi, because someone in my family decided spending money on something else when that money was specifically for buying a goddamn internet router was the better option. So. I have to essentially steal into a hotel's WiFi while perched on a tree with any of my 5 cats judgementally watching me, because though mobile data is a thing...it's not really a possible thing for me.
> 
> Anywho, how'd you like the chapter? The ending was a horrible cliffhanger, I know. :) pls forgive me
> 
> Also, I've only just realized that it might be getting a little frustrating how little actual Klance content there is despite Keith/Lance being the tag here, but don't worry, trust me, starting from the next chapter (even from this one tbh) there'll be a whole lot more Klance interaction. I hope I do our lovely boys worthy because VLD surety fuckety didn't (especially Lance).
> 
>    
> [Wattpad](https://www.wattpad.com/user/azurehyn) || [Tumblr](https://www.azurehyn.tumblr.com)
> 
> p.s., I used to wonder why it's called "Archive of Our Own 'beta'". After struggling to correct the italics on this chapter, only for it to all have been for naught, I know understand. Literally, I've tried everything I can think, nothing works :(


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